February 27th, 2010 07:02
The Association for the Study of Jewelry & Associated Arts are busy creating a series of videos called Moments in Jewelry History. To view their first effort, the overlooked and underrated movement of 19th Century French Electric Jewelry, click here. Here at AJF we particularly liked the scarf pin of golden rabbit beating a tiny gong – a prophetic glimpse of that twentieth century icon of electricity, the Energizer Bunny. (To learn more about the Association for the Study of Jewelry & Associated Arts, click here.)
February 26th, 2010 07:02
Setting ambitious goals at the start of a new year is quite common. Having your new year’s resolution become a booming Internet phenomenon with more than 200 jewelers participating in the first month is an extraordinary event.
New York jeweler Nina Dinoff first heard about making a ring a day for an entire year while attending a workshop at the Haystack Mountain School in Deer Isle, Maine. Though the idea wasn’t new, it nevertheless stuck with her. As someone who felt ‘relentlessly challenged by any sort of day-to-day routine’, Dinoff was inspired to take up the challenge herself. She posted images of her daily creations on Flickr, a photo-sharing website, and encouraged other artists to take part. Just one month into the New Year, there were more than 3000 images at the Ring A Day Project. By December 2010, that number could easily grow to 36,000! (To visit the Ring A Day website, click here.)
Dinoff’s challenge, to ‘make a ring a day no matter where you are, what materials are at your disposal, or how much time you have available’, is yielding some spectacular results. Of equal importance, the Ring A Day Project is building a community of makers that are communicating about and through jewelry every single day. In this virtual workshop setting, all are welcome to explore ideas and techniques and give and receive immediate feedback.
The Ring A Day project is an example of the internet at its best. Bookmark the site, check back often, and prepare to be inspired day after day after day after day.
February 24th, 2010 07:02
It was old home night for many of the some 30 people who attended the gathering at the Shibumi Gallery in Berkeley (Feb. 6), hosted by (the pregnant) April Higashi and her husband, sculptor Eric Powell.
Collectors and artists mingled with the guest speaker, Tina Rath, on sabbatical from her teaching position at the Maine College of Art. She was welcomed by many old friends, including Marilyn and Jack da Silva, Donald Friedlich, and Donna Briskin.
Tina Rath’s ‘wanderings’ have taken her from California (where she was president of the local Metal Arts Guild), for graduate work into Amsterdam, to her present position. As an early admirer of her work I was pleased to wear some ‘vintage Rath’ . . . three wire pendants worn as a collective, earrings and a chunky ring described by her as an ‘urban pacifier’.
I was struck by how her work has softened from the earlier wire designs to pieces incorporating fur, typically mink. Her new Wanderlux installation is larger, bolder, and reflects her new enchantment with the natural world.
February 24th, 2010 08:02
Neither jewelry or rock and roll are going to save the world, but it doesn’t stop us trying. One of the more interesting initiatives to exploit jewelry’s social conscience and political potential is the ‘Middle East Portable Discussion’ put together by I Care A Lot, a non-profit, non-governmental group founded in Stockholm, Sweden, by Dana Hakim (jeweller) and Yosef Bercovich (graphic designer). Their proposal is an international exhibition of contemporary jewelry which tackles the thorny issue of the Middle East. (To visit their website, click here.) As the organizers suggest:
Exploiting this potential of adornment, I Care A Lot is looking for jewelry that provocatively and intelligently mines the ability of jewelry to cast new light on old problems, and to put into question our relationship to, understanding of, and sense of commitment towards, the Middle East. Submissions are due on 15 March 2010, for an exhibition online, at Platina Gallery in Stockholm, and through the medium of a catalogue.
February 23rd, 2010 09:02
Some very exciting news from the agricultural heartland of America. Lena Vigna has taken up the role of Curator of Exhibitions at the Racine Art Museum. (To visit the museum’s website, click here.) The Racine Art Museum is an important collector of contemporary jewellery, and stages a number of jewellery exhibitions each year, contributing significantly to the health of the American contemporary jewellery scene.
Recently AJF published an interview with Bruce Pepich, the director of Racine, which you can read on the AJF website by clicking here. AJF has also published an article by Lena Vigna on heirlooms in contemporary jewellery (to view this text, click here), as well as supporting Vigna’s exhibition Ornament and Excess: Jewelry in the 21st Century, which is currently on display at the Miami University Art Museum until 10 July 2010. (You can visit the museum’s website by clicking here.) We congratulate the Racine Art Museum and Lena Vigna, and look forward to an exciting exhibition future for contemporary jewellery.
February 23rd, 2010 07:02
Uncharacteristically, I boarded a train at four in the morning on Friday 22 January 2010 for an eight-hour trip to Richmond, Virginia. I had not ridden a northbound train from the South since I was a junior in high school. What could possibly be my motivation, you wonder? Why, a jewelry exhibition of course! But not just any jewelry exhibition. It was a chance to visit over forty brooches by Robin Kranitzky and Kim Overstreet. If you read my review of the book that accompanied their Finland exhibition, you have some idea of my fascination with and devotion to their jewelry. Eight hours of clicketty-clack was a small price to pay for such an opportunity. There was another lure as well. The artists would be presenting a demonstration of their techniques and materials Saturday afternoon. I might get to meet them, and would certainly add to my understanding of the work. Besides, it might be a grand adventure, and I was due one.
The exhibition, Fragments of Our Imagination: Narrative Jewelry by the Collaborative Partnership of Kranitzky & Overstreet, delivered on every level. Over forty works were beautifully displayed and exquisitely lit in the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. No more than four pieces were shown in each vitrine, each occupying its own façade. Brooches were angled perfectly for viewing, and the gallery’s supply of magnifying glasses only added to one’s enjoyment of these miniature worlds. One wall contained a ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ taken directly from the artists’s workspace. The array and diversity of material was dizzying. In each of the three exhibition spaces, one wall was occupied by only one brooch in a wall vitrine. Each brooch was chosen perhaps to allow the lighting to illuminate the interiors of the works. They literally glowed. Initially I was disappointed that the curator had offered no statement or other clue as to the selection and arrangement of the works. After spending some hours with the works, I believe I understand why.
Kranitzky and Overstreet’s dioramas are multi-layered, both in construction and meaning. Standing opposite each and leaning forward with a magnifying glass, one is drawn into each private complex world. There is a sense that if given enough time, one might fall into these worlds much as Alice fell into the rabbit hole. Living in Kranitzky and Overstreet’s worlds might offer the same sense of disorientation, thrill, and danger as Wonderland. Some place I might prefer to live in, others I’d rush to escape, but I would be richer for spending any time in these other worlds.
The demonstration was yet another joy. The same symbiosis that pervades their work is evident in their manner and friendship. It was as if fifty of their closest friends had been invited over for chitchat. We learned of the transformation of the most mundane raw materials into moving water, dangerously tangled brush, and ancient appearing mosaics. Their techniques confirmed that no shortcuts exist in creating their pieces. The number of steps from concept to completion is staggering.
Most important was getting a sense of what motivates Kranitzky and Overstreet. They never used the word ‘content’, and did not tell us how their ideas arose. But it is clear to me now that ideas from each coalesce and a narrative is born. Indeed nothing about them or their work seems contrived. It is as if a flow of ideas pauses long enough to form a pool. Each pool is a brooch.
After the demonstration, I went back to look at the works in the exhibit with more informed eyes. I noticed the sublime use of materials from nature, the array of other materials used in each piece, and the way the artists assure that light becomes an integral part of each work. More importantly, I answered my question about curatorial decisions. I recognized for the first time that chronology might not be critically important to the understanding of an artist’s output. Brooches from 1989 rested next to those from 2010. The same devotion to craftsmanship and content was evident regardless of when a piece was created. As familiar as I am with their work, I realize that I cannot date a work from my observation of it. The jewelry of Kranitzky and Overstreet is literally timeless.
As to the train ride, that is a story of another kind. But as I boarded the Silver Star back to my home, I knew that I had eight uninterrupted hours to savor and digest my experience. A grand adventure indeed.
February 22nd, 2010 09:02
Diamonds might be a girl’s best friend, but they are more a kind of frenemy to the contemporary jewelry scene. Initiatives in Art and Culture, an organization based in New York, is running a conference called Diamonds from 9-12 April 2010. (You can visit the conference website by clicking here.)
It seems from the conference publicity that the point is to try and achieve some kind of critical perspective about the diamond’s enduring popularity. ‘This conference’, note the organizers, ‘will take an all-embracing look at diamonds’, which means how they look, how they are used, what they mean, and where they come from. As well as talking about the great gems of history, the conference will ‘mine rich veins in popular culture such as rapper’s “bling” and diamonds in films where, for example, they are heralded as a “girl’s best friend”.’
Actually, it appears from this that the conference is prepared to invest more in the mythology of the diamond than contemporary jewelry would feel comfortable with. The references to ‘bling’ and pop culture icons like Marilyn Monroe obscure a basic refusal to examine design and aesthetics – the challenge of The New Jewelry, for example, which effectively relegated the diamond to pariah status.
We here at AJF have been stung by the contemporary promise of diamonds in the past. Hearing of Elsa Peretti’s Diamonds by the Yard necklace for the first time, we were impressed. What a brilliant way to put into question the issues of value and meaning that swirl around diamond jewelry, and which attach to a venerable name like Tiffany & Co. It seemed that Peretti was, to evoke another famous diamond-lover, Marie Antoinette, having her conceptual cake and eating it too.
Diamonds by the Yard sounded like a production line that would ensure customer satisfaction (lots of diamonds strung on a gold chain) yet also played a conceptual game that teasingly put into question the reason we desire diamonds (rarity, price, individuality). Lumber comes by the yard, not diamonds – unless you are so rich it simply doesn’t matter and your luxury goods can be treated like any other commodity. Which is another enticement that Diamonds by the Yard offers the prospective buyer, who, by purchasing the necklace can become, in their own modest way, part of that exclusive club.
It seemed that Peretti’s necklace would be the luxury jewelry equivalent of Otto Kunzli’s Eight Millimeters of Love. Kunzli’s work is a heart-shaped tube of gold, and it is wonderful for all the reasons that Diamonds by the Yard is a great concept. It makes fun of the heart and the criteria of value in traditional jewelry, as well as taking a potshot at the idea of jewelry as portable wealth (love transformed into commodity). Best of all, it remains available as an authentic statement of affection, a physical symbol of an intangible emotion. Any measurement (whether metric or imperial) of love is absurd and touching at the same time – knowingly self-conscious and seriously committed. It’s a conceptual riff about love and the trite symbols that accompany it, that can also be given with, and worn out of, love.
You can probably guess how this story ends. A visit to the Tiffany & Co website indicated that Peretti’s necklace isn’t even necessarily a yard long (there are 16 and 30 inch versions) and the rationale behind the work is quite far from a conceptual examination of diamonds. According to the Tiffany promotional material, ‘Diamonds by the Yard® and Pearls by the Yard® capture a disarming vision of the natural world’. (To visit the Tiffany website, click here.) So disarming in fact that it is almost impossible to see.
To make up for our disappointment, and to help the good people at the Diamonds conference understand the potential of diamonds, AJF is keen to receive nominations for the best diamond contemporary jewelry. Send us an email and tell us of the diamond jewelry that appeals, first and foremost, to a material girl’s brains rather than her bank account.
February 22nd, 2010 04:02
Here at AJF we are fans of the bold and blunt question. We also see ourselves as amateur anthropologists, studying the human tribe that loves and wears jewelry, whether contemporary or not. So we were tickled when we came across the following exchanges on Blurt It, a website dedicated to answering all your questions, no matter how intelligent or inane. (To visit Blurt It, click here.) The spelling and grammar might not be all one could wish for, but the candor and revelation of jewelry’s fascination certainly left us wanting more.
February 21st, 2010 09:02
This just in from Tokyo, Japan. Lee Byung Hun, an actor from South Korea, and Miyuki Hatoyama, Japan’s first Lady, have won the ‘Best Jewelry Wearer’ Award at International Jewelry Tokyo 2010. Receiving a trophy and platinum necklace, the winners were selected not just for their interest in wearing jewelry but also for their great fashion sense. (You can read more about the award by clicking here.)
Lee Byung Hun, a beloved Hallyu actor (the term refers to the Korean Wave, in which South Korean culture is being embraced by the rest of the world) is the first non-Japanese person to receive the award. He noted, ‘This is the second time in my life that I’ve received jewelry. The first time was on my first birthday, it’s a Korean Tradition to give a golden ring on the first birthday. I will try my best and try to be a jewel of an actor.’
February 21st, 2010 08:02
A wiser, sadder LL Cool J rues the day he turned his back on contemporary jewelry.