AJF Blog

In mid January we published an article on the blog called Original Display. It was an article about Bruce Metcalf’s show using silhouettes of people painted on the wall with jewelry adorning them and he claimed that this was an original idea. I asked if anyone knew about a similar one from the past. Evidently Helen Drutt told Bruce that she thought Gijs Bakker had done something similar and so with some research (thank you, Kerianne Quick) we came up with this image from a Gijs Bakker’s show called Jablonec, held in 1968 in the Czech Republic. The silhouettes were on mirrors with jewelry attached. This idea was used again in 2010 at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design in the show Designers on Jewelry: Twelve Years of Jewelry Production by Chi ha paura…? So what do you think? Similar? The same? Original or not?

Museums collect lots of things and in the past 10 years or so a number of big jewelry collections have gone into museums in the United States. Helen Drutt contributed hers to MFA Houston, Daphne Farago added hers in the MFA Boston and Donna Schneier gave hers to the Metropolitan amongst others. Those big contributions to big museums set their collecting on a specific course depending on the original vision of the donated collection. There are a number of smaller museums building their collections from a smaller base of contributions who get to determine their own course. The Tacoma Art Museum in the state of Washington is doing just that. The decisions about what should be added and the ways in which the museum is able to acquire them is similar but different than those of the collector. However it seemed to go hand in hand with the Collector’s Choice so here is the first explanation of a Curator’s Choice.

Finding Favorites in the Collection

Thinking about which work in Tacoma Art Museum’s collection of studio art jewelry is my favorite brought back a flood of memories of my first few days at the museum a decade ago. To familiarize myself with the collection, I spent about two weeks looking at the works in the vaults. The art storage was literally kept in bank vaults at our former museum, a 1929 Beaux Arts bank building. One of the strongest memories of these early days was opening the case that contained Initiation Necklace (1977) by Nancy Worden. I was astonished by the visceral impact of this thing that looked like jewelry but that did not have anything in common with what I expected in the collection. more...

During the month of February the Galerie Rob Koudijs is featuring two outstanding exhibitions: Tobias Alm: Traces of function and Terhi Tolvanen: Introduction. Tobias is a younger emerging artist and Terhi is a well-established maker but showing for the first time with this gallery. Rob is very articulate about their work and his gallery. Read on.

Susan Cummins: How would you describe the kind of contemporary jewelry you represent?

Rob Koudijs: Here’s what it says on our website: ‘The gallery specializes in contemporary art jewelry which communicates ideas, has sculptural qualities and an innovative use of materials. The gallery represents a very motivated group of jewelry artists who produce work challenging the borders of the applied and the fine arts.’ This still hold true for what we are aiming for and both exhibitions live up to this goal.

Have you represented the two jewelers you are featuring in this exhibition for a long time?

Yes, I’m pleased to say we both picked them when they graduated. Terhi Tolvanen when she had just finished her master-education at the Sandberg Institute (connected to the Rietveld Academy) here in Amsterdam; Tobias Alm at the time he made his bachelor exhibition at Ädellab (Metal Department), Konstfack, Stockholm in Sweden in 2009. more...

Someone had to do it and De Novo Fine Contemporary Jewelry  in Palo Alto California is the AJF member gallery who stepped forward. They host an annual Valentine’s Day exhibition every year, linking jewelry buying with an expression of love. How did jewelry come to signify love? For the answer we look to Wikipedia: ‘Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day is a holiday observed on February 14 honoring one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines").’ Hmm, no mention of jewelry. But reading further on: ‘In the second half of the 20th century, the practice of exchanging cards was extended to all manner of gifts in the United States. In the 1980s, the diamond industry began to promote Valentine's Day as an occasion for giving jewelry.’ So we have the diamond industry to thank for this! I asked Cherry Lebrun if she could tell us some more about her exhibition.

Susan Cummins: How the relationship between Valentines Day and jewelry get established from your perspective?

Cherry Lebrun: Jewelry is often considered to be a romantic gift. Valentine’s Day is a romantic holiday. I think the two fit together very naturally in that Valentine’s Day is a celebration of romance and jewelry is often used a romantic gift. more...

You may have noticed that we are featuring six galleries each month on the AJF website homepage  and I wanted to get the low down about some of the shows that are up in February. I was curious for more insights from either the gallery owners or from the artists. Taboo Studio in San Diego, California, is the first up. They are presenting a show called Color and Form running from February 10 to March 23, 2012. The show features work by Brooke Marks-Swanson, Heather Guidero, Ananda Khalsa, Valerie Mitchell, Joan Parcher, Munya Avigall Upin, and Barbara Uriu. Joanna Rhodes and Jane Groover, co-owners of Taboo Studio, thought that an interview with Brooke Marks-Swanson would provide a flavor of the show and offer special focus on an artist they represent. Marks-Swanson is from South Bend, Indiana and studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

Susan Cummins: How long have you been represented by Taboo Studio?

Brooke Marks-Swanson: I was first invited to be in a show in 2008 and then Jane saw my work at the AJF Geography show this past summer and was gracious enough to invite me again for the current show, Color and Form.

Given your participation in the Geography show, would you say that what you do is influenced by where you live?

Absolutely.  For the longest time I was drawn to the infinite horizon; mostly with the point of contact where the land and the sky meet. Upon further study of my surroundings, I am more interested in the connection between a sense of place, elements from the natural world and the dialogue that develops between the two. more...

As promised here is Kevin Murray’s response to Bruce Metcalf’s article. What do you think about this? Please respond to blogger@artjewelryforum.org

Beyond the occasional comment on a blog site, it’s rare for someone to put the effort into mounting a well-framed argument to express their disagreement. I’m naturally inclined to defend my point of view, but am grateful for the opportunity to continue an argument that will hopefully strengthen both positions.

Bruce Metcalf responded critically to an article I wrote for AJF about ethical jewelry which was recently reposted on this blog.  The kind of ethics I mentioned ranged from the democratic values involved in the critique of preciousness to Ethical Metalsmiths that recruit practice to environmental sustainability.

Ethics is a particularly sensitive subject for jewelry. Jewelry seems to be a medium we set aside from more weighty matters for the enjoyment of frivolity, irony and dazzlement. Expecting moral rectitude from jewelry can appear like throwing a wet blanket on a rare space of innocent play.

Yet we are aware also of monsters lurking in the woods. Jewelry has a profoundly undemocratic history, serving to prop up the aristocratic and military one percent. Stories about ‘blood diamonds’ suggest the trail human and environmental destruction that leads to breakfast at Tiffany’s. more...

Recently I came across Bruce Metcalf’s response to a text by Kevin Murray that AJF published on its blog a few months ago. Kevin’s text, ‘Aesthetics Versus Ethics: Judgment Day for Contemporary Jewelry,’ was written in preparation for the critical discourse session that AJF convened at the SNAG conference in 2011. We published it, Bruce didn’t like it and wrote about it on his blog. By then, we’d launched the new website and Kevin’s text hadn’t been moved over. So, in honor of what we think could be a useful moment of debate, we bring you Kevin’s text, below, and suggest you check out Bruce’s response, ‘Let History Be The Judge,’ on his blog. We’ve asked Kevin if he has anything else to say, and we’ll be publishing his thoughts on the AJF blog in a few days.

The other day I found Benjamin Lignel’s recent post in Art Jewelry Forum, ‘Just what is it that makes today’s art galleries so different, so appealing?’ It was a teasing title. A quick Google revealed its source as a collage by Richard Hamilton, satirizing 1950s consumerism.  

So what makes the art gallery so appealing for contemporary jewelry? Benjamin was reflecting on the first exhibition of contemporary jewelry at Gargosian Gallery, arguably the most prestigious commercial visual art space on the planet. It was an occasion well worth noting. What followed was a series of salutary disappointments. Rather than select a known figure of the contemporary jewelry scene, Gargosian chose the work of a fashion designer with Dior, Victoria de Castellane. more...

In response to the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum show called The Tool at Hand I asked a group of jewelers to talk about their preferred tool. Keith Lewis gave this short and swaggering answer. Try reading it with a cowboy twang. On second thought, perhaps a homoerotic bass tone would work better . . .

The Tool

My favorite tool is a Craftsman brand machinist’s reamer that belonged to my father. As an object it is completely beautiful: tapered, fluted, sharp and poised. It is also singularly specific in its usefulness. It makes holes bigger and is good for nothing else.

I use it all of the time and whenever I pick it up I remember the smell of my father’s shop and the sense of violation I felt selecting tools after he died.

A construction worker who walked like John Wayne and could have been a craftsman, my father made useful things around the house. I have his checkering tool, used for texturing gunstocks. I have a scribe he made from an old dart. And I have his machinist’s reamer.

Keith Lewis is from the wilds of Pennsylvania, where he learned that he liked men a whole lot more than he liked man stuff such as hunting and fishing. He is a jeweler and teaches in the wilds of Washington state, though he craves the city. His favorite fruit is jaboticaba.

In response to the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum show called The Tool at Hand I asked a group of jewelers to talk about their preferred tool. Raissa is a new addition to the AJF membership committee and an enterprising young maker. Here is her response to the question.

A Tool in the Hand

My first instinct was to go with a basic hand tool that has come to feel like home in my hands. Simple, portable, versatile, ancient, I choose a center punch (though in my studio I use this small tool in many ways). It is a key to success of much of my work. I use it for its intended use: to mark the center of a point – the essential step before drilling a hole in a precise spot (grids!). I use it as a scribe, burnishing lines into metal (argyle!). I tap it with a hammer to press into metal – spreading and dispersing it, creating pattern and dimension (texture and facets!).

A typical day for me is hours spent in studio directly holding and manipulating materials in my hands—making sure to  take breaks for yoga, a walk on the beach, or to cook. I formally studied at Rhode Island School of Design but my love for self-expression through adornment has been with me since I was a little girl growing up in the Hudson Valley, NY.

In response to the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum show called The Tool at Hand I asked a group of jewelers to talk about their preferred tool. I was wondering if anyone would choose not to take the question so literally – and here is a more philosophical reaction from contemporary jewelry’s master alchemist Ruudt Peters.

Between Head and Belly

It is a very old-fashioned romantic, nineteenth century idea to describe the tool. At first I didn’t feel the need to react to this question. But upon further consideration I would like to explain why the description of tools is nonsensical. As an artist and jewelry maker my hands are faster than my mind. My hands produce the fight/dialogue between my head and belly, rationality and emotion. From this continuous interaction the work arises. Increasingly the work investigates different techniques and/or material questions. The artist translates his inner philosophy and motivation for the work with a freedom of form and technique. My tools are my brain and intestines, which I have worked with my entire life. All other tools are an extension of my personal action.

Ruudt Peters is a jewellery artist who lives in the Netherlands. He is professor at Alchimia Contemporary jewellery school Florence Italy. www.ruudtpeters.nl