July 19th, 2010 02:07
Gallery S O houses its temporary exhibitions in a small hall behind its permanent salesroom in what used to be a string factory. As the gallery assistant unlocked the room for me during my visit, I noticed ‘Hans Stofer’ written in gold on the architrave above the door, as if we were entering a prestigious family mausoleum.
Yet once the door was opened, the kind of coherent chronological symbolism that you might expect in tombs was replaced by an irreverent scattering of objects gathered around a central corridor made from wood panels, disassembled from a garden shed. This was the passageway that, according to Gallery S O’s press release, the visitor must pass through to enter Hans Stofer’s ‘hidden world and view pieces that attempt to walk the line of maintaining a fragile balance between binary extremes’. These dichotomies included function and non-function, art and craft, sanity and madness, purpose and accident, familiarity and alienation, and many other couplets aside.
Missing from this list is the dichotomy between tools and sculpture. This is important because this exhibition is not just an entrance point to Stofer’s creative headspace but a focused interrogation of the concept of tools and tooling.
Tooling has aroused recent attention within applied art theory. Craft theorist Glenn Adamson wrote a short essay called ‘Tooling up and tooling down’ in Eighteen proposals, a catalogue for Royal College of Art Ceramics and Glass graduating students (May 2010) in which he positioned ‘vertical movement within the single meta-field of tooling’ as a potential post-disciplinary strategy. This represents an alternative approach to the current popularity of lateral movement across disciplines (for example, a jeweler engaging with sculpture), and might involve deliberately using the wrong tool for the job, or conflating different tools together. An example of this ‘tool-as-art’ genre is Tim Hawkinson’s Signature (1993) that combines old school chair with winged platform, a ballpoint pen, a roll of cash register tape and motorized elements to make a contraption that endlessly reproduces his own signature. The chits of paper pile up, making an obvious statement about artistic authorship, but the work also provokes an enquiry into the relationship between art object and tool.
Critical examination of tooling in art practice engenders a post-disciplinary future where craft takes centre stage, due to applied art practitioners’s closeness to the tools they use. But serious discussion of the role of tools in practice is held back by the romantic and often spiritual way in which makers describe their tools.
Stofer’s exhibition Walk the line does not indulge in such an infatuation with tools. Instead there is a playful provocation of the tool as sculpture. Paintbrushes with spoon ends are standing in jam jars and stained tin cans; a jug is made from a one-pint plastic milk vessel and an orange juice carton; nails have tiny ornamental heads on them that would make them frustrating to use in any DIY project; buckets become chairs; a trowel has a candle for a handle. Tools are twisted, made ridiculous and denied of function; conversely found objects are made into tools.
Many of Sofer’s works fall into the Duchampian tradition of the assisted readymade, taking a found object and doing something extra to it. The Swiss Gruyère cheese is not asking to be judged as an art object by itself but is shaped into a cross, parodying traditional jewelry iconography. At the end of the corridor is Off my trolley, a wooden cart laden with what appears to be shards of the artistic process – cigarettes, graffiti, smears, half-used paint tubes and plastic cups. But each piece is constructed by hand: what appears to be a stubbed cigarette, for example, is actually made of metal.
This is more than just an effort to ‘tease out something new and meaningful from the old and unwanted’ as Fiona Rattray put it in her review for Crafts magazine (n.224, May/June 2010). This is a playful, proactive appropriation of found objects that are shaped into functionless and functional tools/art. Moreover, Stofer deceives the audience into thinking that he has only used readymades, when actually he has employed craft skill to make things look like readymades. There is a deception at play, showing how makers can exercise magic on materials to trick viewers – an exploration of craft as ‘crafty’, or cunning.
The title of the show recalls the famous Johnny Cash song ‘I walk the line’. Of course we could explain this choice of title as a reference to treading the fine line between all those dichotomies mentioned earlier – the treacherous path of the maker between art and craft. But there is an alternative reading. Cash often recalled that when composing this song in the 1950s that he wanted to use a snare drum. However, this instrument was unpopular in country music at the time so instead he put a piece of paper in between the guitar strings and the fret board to create his own ‘snare drum’ effect. It is perhaps this more obscure reference, the making of a tool specific to need, that we should look to for in a more provocative reading of the show.
July 17th, 2010 02:07
AJF is very pleased to bring you the first in a series of posts showcasing the work of graduate contemporary jewelry students from leading schools around the world. First up in the AJF honor roll for 2010 is SUNY New Paltz, located in the state of New York, United States.
To view the complete set of images from SUNY New Paltz, click here.
July 16th, 2010 01:07
Susan Cummins, Chair of the Art Jewelry Forum (AJF), and Susan Kempin, Award Program Chair, are pleased to announce this year’s Emerging Artist Award winner, Agnes Larsson. Larsson was chosen from among 117 entries, from 38 countries.
The goal of the Emerging Artist Award is to acknowledge promise, innovation and individuality in the work of emerging jewelers. The competition is open to makers of art jewelry who have recently completed their professional training and have not been a featured artist in a commercial gallery or museum. Larsson will receive a $5,000 cash award. In addition, her work will be featured by an AJF member gallery at the Sculptural Object and Functional Art (SOFA) Expo in Chicago and in AJF ads, and she will serve as a juror for next year’s competition.
Jurors for the 2010 competition were Namita Wiggers, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, Oregon; Susan Beech, long-standing member of AJF and collector of contemporary jewelry; and Sharon Massey, jeweler and recipient of the AJF’s 2009 Emerging Artist Award.
Criteria used in the judging were originality, depth of concept and quality of craftsmanship. Larsson used carbon and horse hair in this series of work she submitted. She allows the material to lead the way through the working process, drawing inspiration from thoughts about gravity, lightness and heaviness, death, life, transparency and darkness, growth, decomposition and transformation to show contrasts like fragility and strength, depth and surface, darkness and light.
Juror Susan Beech commented, ‘This body of work most exemplified the guidelines for judging: originality, depth of concept and quality of craftsmanship. The use of carbon and horsehair, original materials, work well together. The first thought that came to mind when I looked at this body of work was elegant.’ Sharon Massey added, ‘Agnes Larsson presents a cohesive body of work that I found quite unusual and poetic. Her forms are simple, emphasizing the texture and blackness of the carbon as well as the fragility of the horsehair. Her artistic voice seemed the most authentic and unique.’
Larsson received a BFA, in 2004, and an MFA, in 2007, in Silversmithing and Jewellery from Konstfack University College of Arts, Craft and Design, Stockholm, Sweden.
July 15th, 2010 08:07
Dichotomies in Objects: Contemporary South African studio jewelry from the Stellenbosch Area is an exhibition comprised of jewelry artists from Stellenbosch, South Africa. The artists have been selected by myself (Lauren Kalman) and Carine Terreblanche, a jeweler and educator from Stellenbosch. All the jewelers in the show are affiliated with Stellenbosch University – one of the only schools in South Africa teaching conceptual approaches to jewelry making – as faculty, students, lecturers or alumni. They have been selected to represent a diverse cross section that reflects a variety of approaches, from highly conceptual practices, tongue-in-cheek kitsch, to more poetic material investigations of form. The jewelers in Stellenbosch are trained with a high technical proficiency and a strong conceptual understanding, with some investigating jewelry using contemporary media, such as digital video.
The exhibition highlights collections of five to ten pieces per artist. By having collections from each jeweler it is my hope that the viewer will be able to see trends, themes and deviations that permeate both individual bodies of work and the group as a whole.
Currently the exhibition is on at Velvet da Vinci in San Francisco, and traveling to the Ohio Craft Museum in Columbus.
The exhibition was conceived in 2008 while I was an artist in residence in the Jewelry Department at Stellenbosch University. During my stay the department was installing the exhibition Inventions at the Gold of Africa Museum in Cape Town. I was impressed by the quality of the work and began to collaborate with my co-curator, Carine Terreblanche, to bring a exhibition of South African studio jewelry to the United States. The catalog was made possible through funding from the Society of North American Goldsmith, a co-sponsor of the exhibition.
The primary goal of the exhibition is to introduce American audiences to the thriving contemporary jewelry tradition in South Africa. It is my hope that this exhibition will break stereotypes and assumptions about what African jewelry is or can be. Specifically that African jewelry comes from both traditional methodologies and conceptual practices. With critical discourse in the contemporary jewelry field focused on the northern hemisphere it is my hope that this work will feel new and invigorating.
Cross-cultural exchange allows for the expansion of ideas and experiences. Exhibitions such as Dichotomies in Objects are one way to promote the transfer of ideas. They broaden our understanding of the world and help to cultivate more globally minded and socially aware individuals.
I had the opportunity to see work by many of the artists first hand, and the remainder were selected by Carine Terreblance. The goal was to find work that was visually challenging and experimental or conceptually driven in nature. Dr. Lize van Robbroeck, Associate Professor of the Department of Visual Arts, Stellenbosch University, was selected to write an essay for the catalog as an expert in the field of visual arts in South Africa.
In this case it is a method to curate a group of objects. By setting a constant criteria the work can be compared and contrasted within a fixed set of parameters. One might find that the work is very much South African in character or perhaps that nationality is no that cohesive a label. That being said, it is interesting to consider how factors related to geographic location – like landscape, climate, and culture – might impact the process of making.
That remains to be seen.
July 12th, 2010 10:07
Here’s a nice article by AJF member Lindsay Pollock, originally published in Art + Auction, about the growing interest in contemporary jewelry, and a number of important donations to American museums over the past couple of years which have shifted institutional attitudes to contemporary jewelry as a notable (and collectable) practice. (To read the article, click here.)
A number of the people discussed in the article, including Donna Schneier and Helen Drutt English, are members of AJF, which goes to show that it is possible to make a significant impact on behalf of contemporary jewelry in the wider art world. AJF began life as an organization of contemporary jewelry collectors who wanted to make a practical difference to the art jewelry scene through grants and programs that would support makers – and the writers, curators, museums and collectors who support them. AJF has been working hard to expand its activities, and to broaden its membership base. If you would like to get involved, and put your membership donation to work on enhancing the recognition and support for contemporary jewelry, then consider becoming a member of AJF. To find out more about what this involves, click here.
July 9th, 2010 09:07
It’s an important moment in the history of contemporary jewelry design in New Orleans. There are only a few venues for contemporary work of this nature in the city so it’s a remarkable moment when one of the city’s prominent museums is willing to celebrate work from the field of contemporary metalsmithing.
Jan Katz knows her stuff. She’s been a fan of contemporary jewelry, collects it and knows the current maker scene. She selected an appropriate range of artists relative to experience, reputation and influence from the field and, as a result, the show makes a vigorous statement about the quality and character of the artists working in the medium today.
I was a bit disappointed at the installation site for the show. It takes place in the museum store, which is a nicely designed modern space, but not as nice, nor as important, as many of the museum’s primary exhibition halls. But, in light of the restricted budgets that most organizations and galleries are working with to mount exhibitions these days, displaying the work in four pullout drawers (the top two side by side, which had glass tops) was adequate, just not as celebratory as you might hope for. In support of that decision though, Katz’s very helpful sales assistant is happy to remove any of the pieces for closer inspection. And all the work is for sale, so maybe the store is a better exhibition space for everyone concerned.
To their credit as well, at the opening on Thursday 21 April, in between Jazz Fest weekends, models walked around the museum acting as moving canvases, with exhibition brooches displayed from collar to hem. Of particular note is that, despite the lack of funds for a catalog, they made the inventive, creative decision to enlist the aid of artist Fredrick Stivers, who hand drew a lovely illustration of each piece in the show. His work was employed in the design of a simple broadside layout catalog in B & W. This piece alone is remarkable. A unique document of the event and, in my estimation, a document that is collectable in it’s own right.
Anyway, here are some reflections on the work of each jewelry designer in the exhibition.
Linda Threadgill: really snappy copper compositions. Lots of kinetic energy. Inventive shapes and connections.
Biba Schutz: I want to see these pieces BIG on a wall somewhere. Biba’s imagination is on the threshold of the fifth dimension!
Bob Ebendorf: Ebendorf appears to be channeling Rauschenberg, Klimt, and Cornell all at the same time! And the eclectic fine mesh personal vocabulary filter he strains them through produces iconic work. And the pieces he sent for this exhibition are in addition really ridiculously low in price. What were you thinking Bob?
Valerie Mitchell: Wow! Valerie really stepped out into a new dimension for these pieces. I’d love to see the rest of this group cause’ these enameled, electroformed shapes are spectacular! She is obviously experimenting and pushing her personal envelope in new and exciting directions. You go girl!
Rachelle Thiewes: She is always pushing the edge, and always successfully! That’s what is so unnerving about her work, damn it! Brightly painted circular motion steel forms with brilliant magnetic discs for securing the pin to fabric.
Marjorie Simon: Most of us know Marjorie for her torched fired enamel work. But the pieces she sent for this exhibition are revelatory and exceptional. So even if she dug them out of a personal archive of work they are still delicious in their creativity and structure.
Kiwon Wang: We know that Kiwon is the Pearl R Us designer of record. So it was cool to see here actually systems bashing her silver structural work (with pearls) with her also signature use of newspaper (with pearls) in one of her two pieces.
Sondra Sherman: Black is beautiful! These pieces from Sandra’s current body of work are an exceptional exploration of steel and enamel.
Marlene True: Steel, gold, delicious apparently fragile elegant forms. Luscious!
Joyce Scott: Hey, make a face Joyce! No, not that face, the one with BEADS! Get these prototypical Joyce Scott pieces NOW!
Linda Darty: Queen of enameling, flower goddess, delicate lovely enchanting pink!
Anya Pinchuk: She is really working it! An awesome extrapolation of polymer clay, crystals, wood. Three pieces, all completely different, all completely cool!
Sandra Enertline: Did you know that Sandra drills everyone of those tiny, tiny holes by hand, no techno tricks. It’s INSANE but beautiful, elegant and full, absolutely stuffed with metal umami!
Arthur Hash: Only one piece but a clear demonstration of Arthur’s continuing interest in exploring the possibilities of technology applied to jewelry design.
Joanna Gollberg: Space is the place, Johanna! Suspended stones on a course to somewhere, most likely on your lapel!
Kathleen Brown: The butterfly piece is deceptively light, precise and enchanting. Kathleen is always experimenting. Her very precise vocabulary reveals itself delicately in these pieces.
Julia Barello: The floating window escape, with x-ray lenses, another world awaits.
Heidi Gerstacker: dude, let’s get minimal – thin, balanced, sharp.
Marcia McDonald: Marcia, we love you even though, invited, you weren’t here in this show with us.
Pat Flynn: Pat’s work drives elegance strait down the center of brilliance. His evolution from historic the inspiration imbued in hand forged nails through those objects delivered to these exquisite objects is a true travel adventure.
Don Friedlich: Donald has carved out (literally and figuratively) his own niche in the pantheon. Slate, then glass. What’s next? Remember the Clothes Pins? Really inventive. (Ask him about them.)
Susie Ganch: Absolutely the most cutting edge piece in the show! Susie is kicking it big time for inventive use of materials and techniques. Buy this work NOW – it’s going to be immensely important.
Thomas Mann: You don’t really expect me to review my own work here, do you? You’ll have to be satisfied with my admission that I am addicted to beach combing for stones!
July 8th, 2010 06:07
Should you find yourself in Santa Fe, New Mexico, during the next four days we suggest you make a visit to SOFA West and check out the high-end craft and contemporary jewelry on display from 8-11 July 2010. If the only sofa you have ever heard of is a kind of couch, let AJF be your guide to one of the major institutions of the American craft scene. According to the SOFA website:
SOFA Chicago has been running annually since 1994, and was joined by SOFA New York in 1998. SOFA West: Santa Fe is the new kid on the block, now in its second year. (You can find out more about SOFA by clicking here.)
Contemporary jewelry lovers attending the fair should look out for ‘My hands are my favorite tools: conversations with four jewelers – Robin Waynee, Kenneth Johnson, Pat Pruitt and Cody Sanderson’, taking place on Friday 9 July 2010. The organizers are branding this event as ‘A panel discussion on Southwest jewelry today featuring four artists whose work is contemporary and individualistic, but at the same time a continuum of the art inspired by the vast cultural and natural landscapes of the American Southwest.’
We asked AJF gallery member Charon Kransen if he could tell us a little bit about why he attends SOFA West, and what he was intending to show this time around. Here’s what he told us:
AJF will be publishing a review of SOFA West: Santa Fe on our website in the next month, so if you want to know more (including the color of the Charon Kransen booth), keep watching this space.
July 6th, 2010 09:07
For makers, collecting can be a dangerous addiction. It’s hard to justify buying another artist’s work if you’re barely making ends meet selling your own. The inevitable solution of trading is well established in every creative field, and bartering has always held a special appeal to anyone who maintains a less than traditional livelihood. In the field of art jewelry, the Pin Swap at SNAG’s annual conference is one established method of acquiring a lot of work at one time, but what about special pieces? I’m going to explore a few different avenues for makers to trade with other makers and share my experiences.
The dance between two makers trying to arrange a trade can be many things – thrilling when someone you really admire contacts you for a trade, awkward when someone wants a piece that you’d really prefer to sell, and frustrating if the value of the pieces on the table feel out of balance. I’ve experienced all of the above scenarios, and I’d like to think I’ve navigated alright so far. I’ve come away with some amazing work from artists I really admire, and I’m proud of my little fledgling collection. Also I’ve got a few outstanding trades in the docket that keep me working if I hit a lull.
For those suffering from anxiety over ‘losing’ merchandise in a trade, try and remember that a piece that finds a good home can become very good advertising. More importantly, you’ll get a piece in exchange that will connect you to that other person forever. Of course if you aren’t into the piece that’s been offered then don’t feel obligated to trade either. Brush up on your etiquette and politely decline - or else the piece you end up with will just be a constant reminder of what a milquetoast you were.
Thanks to the diligent work of Emily Watson, I’ve been part of two group exchanges organized through Flickr. The first was built around the ‘Secret Santa’ model. (For those of you unfamiliar, names are cross-matched so that no one does a one-to-one trade and the person you will receive your ‘gift’ from is a surprise.) I sent my piece to a jewelry maker in Turkey, and I was very lucky to receive a piece from Marta Miguel Martínez-Soria. I had admired her work for some time, and the piece I received – a necklace made from disassembled colored pencils, resin, and wood – was amazing.
The second exchange that Emily organized was more akin to an exquisite corpse project, though with only one level of removal. Makers selected an element from their studio that was incomplete and mailed it to their assigned artist. Each participant then received an unfinished piece from another artist. We all finished the elements in whatever fashion we saw fit, and mailed them back to the original maker. This swap was more challenging, but also more rewarding. I received several unfinished electroformed and enameled elements from Liz Steiner, along with a lovely note. She was familiar with my work and very excited, so the pressure was on! In the meantime my element was destined for the Swap Mistress herself, Emily Watson. I was a fan of her work as well, so I chose carefully and sent something I thought was both representative of my work but also open for another maker. An unfinished electroformed piece fit the bill.
It took me awhile to resolve the pieces I was sent, but I was glad when they all came together and I returned them to Liz. But even more exciting was my piece back from Emily’s studio. She had added carved ebony elements that were something I strongly associated with her work, and the copper had been heavily oxidized. The final piece felt much more somber than my typical work, but underneath that strange little form was still mine. We had our own little love child.
‘We Swap’ was founded by two Etsy users, Uloni and JuliAni, who began their friendship with a trade after mutual Etsy admiration. They decided there must be other Etsy users and makers out there who would want the same opportunity so they created We Swap, a universal swap hub for makers of all kinds. Though both founders are based in Hamburg, Germany, the swaps are open to artists around the world. I decided to try out this new site and see what the results were.
I chose a brooch that I thought would make a good swap piece and followed their listing procedure on the site. Swappers can stipulate what they’re looking for, so I just put that I wanted another piece of art jewelry in return. When a piece is listed, others watching the site can propose what they have on offer with links to photos or to their Etsy shop. It’s particularly exciting to watch offers rack up, and I can see how the whole process could become addictive. I decided on scoring a crocheted necklace by Uloni that I just happened to have had my eye on for a couple of months.
We will both cover the cost of shipping, but I don’t think that’s too much to ask when getting a covetable piece of work from a maker who lives halfway across the globe. I hope the introduction to We Swap encourages others to list work and see what happens . . .
June 24th, 2010 09:06
I have many times visited the question, ‘why jewelry?’ The choice to make small, wearable, durable objects rather than large, impermanent, edible, inhabitable or otherwise different objects is one I think about a lot. The impulse to go up in scale has been stronger and stronger recently, and having finally made the shift in this collection to including wall pieces, I find a refreshing new question appears: ‘which jewelry?’ And, ‘what else?’. If I eliminate the requirement that everything I make must be small and wearable, an interesting thing happens to all the ideas: some of them naturally stay in the category of jewelry because they are entirely appropriate to that category, and the rest find their way to other categories, the overall effect being a feeling of space and possibility (in the jewelry and everywhere else) that I’ve never experienced before.
I’m reminded of a swimming area roped off on the surface of a lake. The rope sits on the surface telling people how to think about the water, but the water itself moves according to its own natural laws. I have always experienced categories as dams . . . but I think they’re really ropes.
The pieces in this group fall mainly in two directions. Half are driven almost entirely by flat images in black and white and are minimally constructed. The small features in gold and enamel added to these came with the choice to make these into jewelry and not something else, like small leashes to prevent them from running off. The rest of the pieces are dense, heavy faceted and stacked objects in wood whose surface interest exists mainly in relation to their structure. I worked on both series at the same time, going back and forth and using the contrast in process to lead me to each next step.
The flat pieces are made by scratching through white industrial paint down to black oxidized steel underneath. The feeling of drawing with sandpaper and a knife is totally different from that of drawing with a pen. It takes both arms, it makes a sound, it creates dust. The slight distraction of the physical work involved is just enough to keep me from overthinking what I’m doing – it’s the perfect way of tricking myself into drawing from my actual present experience rather than trying to corner distinct images and get them ‘right’. These start as large panels which I work on in all directions, and I know when I begin that they will get chopped up according to the feelings of a different day, when I skim them with a small frame looking for places where a small interaction of shape and line suggests a tension or excitement or sadness that fits what’s on my mind. For me, this secondary extraction feels like something between photography and cartography. The full frame implies something partially captured, rather than created to fill a space, and the choice of which areas to magnify and set apart takes a judgment on my part similar to that of a mapmaker deciding what gets an insert: which parts of this city do people care about the most?
The wall pieces made with this same drawing process are constructed exactly the same way as the brooches (minus the pin mechanism) and they occupy the wall in much the same way as the brooch sits on the shirt. I’m finding it fascinating to consider what changes, and what doesn’t, in that migration to the wall.
The evolution of the wood pieces is similar to that of the drawings. I begin from a table full of forms, some of which have gone through some transformation outside my studio (sawmill, construction, fire) and some of which I have altered with my own tools. I select and trim and paint and combine, registering my own response as I add and subtract parts to arrive at the small ‘situations’ which I eventually pin together and fasten with steel.
When talking with people about my work the conversations almost always revolve around suggestion and interpretation. The compositions are resolved but the narratives are open-ended, left so intentionally. Every viewer has a different story, a different perception of the scale, the subject and the emotional content; I listen for these responses and am continually surprised by them and by the range and intensity of their expression. Each of these new observations adds a layer to the content of the piece. Though the memory of my own impulse in creating it will always be there, I rely on that impulse only as long as it takes to finish the making, after which I would rather talk about someone else and something new. I am not interested in creating a vehicle for one idea or in bolting a single story into place. I am curious about perception and other people and am describing my own experience as a starting point. From there, the conversation is the reason for the piece.
June 23rd, 2010 07:06
‘For the Love of God is an amazing piece by Damien Hirst that consists of a platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with 8.601 diamonds including a massive pear- shaped one on the forehead. It cost 14 million pounds to produce. This is the ultimate contemporary piece of art that everyone wants to display in their home.
Now, with iHIRST you will be able to create your very own replica. We have included a real size plastic skull and and all the crystals you need to create your copy (Yes! Each one of the 8.601 crystals at an incredible price!). Even the glue and the tweezers are included; patience is the only thing you need. It´s a challenge!! You can even customize your design by adding crystals with different colours if you prefer. Choose your tools. With iHIRST you can create an entirely new design or stick to the original one. Enjoy a piece of art that´s as entirely individual as you are yourself.’