Please join us on Friday, November 2, from 11 - Noon, at SOFA Chicago to hear a presentation by the AJF-sponsored speaker, Gerd Rothman. While many of us are familiar with Gerd’s jewelry, he has returned to a form from the past — silver utensils. “I started again in 1998. What inspired me was the discovery of something that is taken for granted in a different context. If you take a cleaned or polished silver item, a silver bowl or cup for example, into your hand, you will leave fingerprints. However, to perceive these fingerprints not as something distracting but as something that is aesthetically pleasing was new. After years, I had again found a way of relating to silver utensils. The prints, which are cast in silver, are fitted and soldered into the utensil.”
Speakers/Presentations
AJF is pleased to sponsor Australian artist Catherine Truman’s speaking engagement at SOFA New York in June. Catherine is co-founder of Gray Street Workshop in Adelaide, Australia. Established in 1985, it is one of Australia’s longest running contemporary jewelry studios. Her work has always been informed by a strong political consciousness. In recent work she investigates the authenticity of the images we carry about our personal anatomy. The resulting objects, characteristically carved from wood or wax, are not exact anatomical replicas but rather evoke sensory responses of physical recognition and resemblance.
Catherine explains, “I am a maker of objects for and about the human body. My current interests lie in the ways in which human anatomy has been translated through artistic process and scientific method - how the experience of living inside a body has been given meaning.
The interior of the body is a concealed territory - the less we see the more we imagine. I’m interested in how we reveal and conceal the unfamiliar - the unaccustomed, the invisible. A curiosity of the very nature of the human body itself has always been a potent resource for the subject matter of my work and my choice of medium.”
Truman has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally and is represented in a number of major national and international collections. Currently she is a Fine Arts masters by research candidate at Monash University.
Image: Yellow #3 (brooch), 2006 carved English lime wood, paint, shu nihu ink, 80 x 110 x 40mm. Photo by Grant Hancock
(edited text from her SOFA presentation)
For many years now I have been absorbed in the ways in which the human body has been depicted throughout medical history—particularly through illustration and three-dimensional models. I’ve pursued historical anatomical collections around the globe. Anatomy has in fact been a long-term addiction.
If I were asked to define my practice in a single sentence I would say that: I am a maker of objects about and for the human body.
My starting point has always been the body, either as a canvas or as a subject in itself. I have always found it to be a very potent vehicle for the exploration of both the personal and the political.
Predominantly I carve wood. The wood I use is English Lime, which is a traditional carving wood from the Linden tree. Wood is a simple organic material, easily understood and it still plays a part in most peoples daily domestic lives. I am seduced a little by its pale flesh-like qualities but I’m not interested in expressing the material for the material’s sake.
When I choose to carve wood it’s like being inside of a three-dimensional drawing. The experience is absolutely physical and over the years in order to sustain my passion for carving, I have had to learn that every bit of my anatomy is a tool in the process.
In 1995 I succumbed to a strain injury. As a consequence I began to study the Feldenkrais method and became interested in the anomaly I felt between the clinical anatomical images in the text books and my own experience of the body. In direct response I started to make work that was a personal sensorial recording of the structures of the body beginning with bone, muscle and skin. I wanted to record and carve images of the impressions and sensations I had personally experienced of these structures. I placed them under the microscope in an attempt to hold these sensations still.
In 1997, I traveled to Europe and had my first experience of visiting several important historical anatomical collections in Leiden, Utrecht, and London. My curiosity about the history of anatomical representation was deepening. But at that stage I was indiscriminate about what I was looking at or more likely what I was looking for.
I wanted to see everything, pathology and anatomy of humans and animals, wet and dry specimens; and I found I was both compelled and a little overwhelmed by the contents of the jars.
And because I now experienced a greater sense of physical ease when working, my natural instinct was to work with larger tools, involving more of my body and using the larger muscles of my body more efficiently in the action of carving. The scale of my work was beginning to increase in size– that was a marked change.
At this point there was a subtle shift in my aesthetic. My interpretation of the relationship between internal organs and industrial forms gave the work an uncomfortable sensibility.
At the same time I was becoming more and more curious about the history of anatomical representation and became highly aware that the individual skill and nuances of the anatomist and the illustrator were permeating the images in the publications I was studying. The images display a certain level of personal interpretation and expression, and the fact that seemed to be real people behind these images was an encouragement for me to go on looking.
The work I have here at SOFA depicts a series of bodies that are not perfect—they are indeed quite peculiar.
In her book On Longing, Susan Steward wrote that: “The body depicted always tends towards exaggeration—either in the convention of the grotesque or the convention of the ideal.” She says that “there are few images less interesting than an exact anatomical drawing of the human form.”
It is this slippage between the perfect and the imperfect body that I’m experimenting with now—the levels of distortion that slip into the process of imaging the body and the transformations that occur as a result.
I think we each carry our very own notions of the perfect body and yet always feel that we live in an imperfect flesh. So the body we have sometimes feels like strange, ill-fitting garment.
There is another influence here that stems from another of my passions. That is my passion for contemporary dance—ore more precisely—the bodies of contemporary dancers in movement.
In solo performance, even the most seemingly symmetrical of bodies become peculiar with the intense scrutiny they demand of the audience. I often find myself scanning for a nuance that sets each dancer apart.
In the same way anatomical museums make similar kinds of demands upon me as those I experience when I’m a member of a dance audience, I am there by personal choice–to learn something of myself through the body of another. To be given permission to look beyond the boundaries into the interior of something as sacred as the human body: This offers me a new sense of possibility, a new way of seeing the body.
I have seen a number of companies of ‘disabled’ dancers and have been mesmerized by the extraordinary movements compelled by asymmetries—magnified under the spotlight—those differences commonly read as distortions that we are trained to politely look away from. And I’ve discovered an exquisite beauty in the body’s ability to find balance in movement. This has been a catalyst for the new work.
So, as you can see, I am indeed a driven woman…driven by an intense curiosity about the story of anatomical representation…how our knowledge of anatomy has been influenced…and, in a sense, handmade by others. The skills of the modelers, in particular their personal understanding of the body has played an essential role in how we image the body today.
For me, I feel this has been very much a story of opening out. I began the journey with a sense of dislocation and alienation and an intense curiosity about the source of my contemporary understanding of the body and I have found that it is, of course, a history located in stories of human endeavor, compelled by the strengths and imperfections and the foibles of individuals. Discovering the human stories behind the history has been liberating in a way, finding out what connects us to each other. For me it is a life-long passion.
Edited for the AJF website
Reprinted courtesy of Andrea Wagner (curator)
The “Golden Clogs, Dutch Mountains” exhibition was initiated by the Velvet da Vinci Gallery, which was also the first venue for the exhibition, and is now traveling to five other galleries in the U.S. and Canada.
I’m curator of Golden Clogs, Dutch Mountains as well as a studio jeweller in Amsterdam
For Golden Clogs, Dutch Mountains I chose artists who have graduated and emerged within roughly the last twelve years. I wanted to present strong innovative work that communicates with powerful visual language. My choice also went out for work in which material itself conveys the story, work that consciously uses the emotional value of materiality.
It may not be quite as well-known to a larger public as its bigger (design) sibling, but contemporary jewelry from the Netherlands has and is continually, making a name for itself internationally.
Now, jewelry today isn’t pared down to quite the same extent, but it definitely shares the same mentality of not becoming cluttered. Because jewelry’s intrinsic nature is adornment, this obviously automatically invites a much wider and more thorough use of materials. Dutch jewelry artists, though, tend to make very conscious choices in order to prevent, as it were, the sort of detracting - what I’d describe as visual background noise — that a piece would exude if the maker would just go on an uncontrolled decoration binge. So it’s mainly about making clear decisions, decisions on which material and technique would be the strongest in transmitting a story or concept. Actually a kind of “Less is more” attitude.
It was only pretty much in the later stages of compiling this lecture that I realized something interesting to an extent that I hadn’t quite expected. There is one very outstanding factor in which this generation differs strongly from the ones before. It’s the proof of fading geographical boundaries. Many of the artists in this exhibit aren’t originally Dutch.
So I suppose this automatically raises the question: are we still talking about Dutch jewelry design here or not?
Of course, it must be taken into consideration that - with one single exception - all of these artists had their academic studies at the Amsterdam (Gerrit) Rietveld Academy, and with that training does come a certain kind of design mentality.
These artists now live and work in the Netherlands contributing towards some of the most interesting work that Dutch avantgarde jewelry design has to offer today, and I strongly believe that this has even given the field additional exiting impulses.
It will certainly be interesting to see what this melting-pot of cultural influences continually converging with the Dutch mentality shall be opening up to in the future!
And now, the actual participants of GOLDEN CLOGS, DUTCH MOUNTAINS:
Iris Eichenberg - German-born graduated 1994:
In 2000 she took over as head of the Rietveld Academy Jewelry Dept. after Ruudt Peters, and is now currently head of dept. at Cranbrook/Michigan.
She had already trained to become a nurse when she arrived in Amsterdam to study jewelry.Her work in the past has been a lot about the body and its various systems and processes - like in her “Hearts”. There was a whole pile of them in her graduation show, having all been knit by different women and sometimes using their own red wool. That gave the hearts a variation of interesting personalities in texture and colorations of red.
In recent years her themes have moved towards another area - that of kinship relations.
Her series “Heimat” - an untranslatable German word for place of origin, place of birth, home - a kind of symbolic realm that also bears a certain amount of longing. It’s looking back to her childhood memories of growing up in a German landscape. The typical building style with timbers, or the layout of the landscape, people in that past - all influence the materialization of the series.
Regarding the myriads of materials that Iris uses - it’s actually easier to ask what she hasn’t used, and the answer to that will probably be the shorter one. Amongst other techniques she sews and stitches through just about anything - rubber, plastics, textile, leather, wood, bone.
Jantje Fleischhut - German-born / graduated 2002:
Her fascination for plastic originally began with some intriguingly interesting thrown-away pieces of plastic trash and continued to evolve into her wonderfully colored and partly translucent sturdy light elements that are self-constructed of fiberglass and epoxy resin as we see here in this brooch from her series “Neighborhood”.
Her pieces from the series “We Are All Space Travellers” seem to suggest to us that they are technical articles for daily use. They are like prosthesis or navigational aides for encounters and recognizing.
Interesting is that the attachment pins in Jantje’s brooches are hidden away in little silver stopper tops, so that when the piece is worn the little stopper can either be fastened from behind your clothing or through a fold of the fabric on the front.
Gésine Hackenberg - German-born graduated 2001:
A little ice-cream stick covered in Japanese Urushi laquer is worn with a separate pin as brooch. Her theme is the use of things in daily life and about belongings - jewelry and commodities, such as household and kitchen utensils. For example her graduation series was about spoons. Ultimately, her work is about personal preciousness. A gingham necklace seems to celebrate the simple everyday actions in one’s own personal living realm.
Besides textile, she has especially been using the extremely tough Japanese Urushi lacquer. This technique of is incredibly time- consuming. With it she makes sturdy hollow elements that are very lightweight. The shapes of both the laquer and silver elements are borrowed from kitchen objects, plastic joghurt containers, and other packaging. The silver parts were made by paint layering the inside of the original plastic elements for more thickness and directly casting them.
Her work is her manner of rendering and preserving the picture of the homely but slowly vanishing household-table-and-meals culture.
Ineke Heerkens - Dutch graduated 2001:
“A naked body jumping into the water creates a space around itself, a Waterhole.
At the very same moment the water becomes the body’s jacket…”
This Waterhole idea serves as Ineke’s personal metaphor representing the negative space that would be created with movements occurring in water. It’s her basis and recurrent theme in working. She starts out by making drawings of movements as in a Waterhole. These are then transferred onto flexible materials such as silk-screened textile or leather - like “Lily” here, made from leather with a thick layer of silk-screen ink and formed into shape in a heat process.
Once the drawings have been transferred onto the material they subsequently serve as
cutting patterns. These are then moulded and formed into organic, 3D forms.
Stephanie Jendis - German-born graduated 1999:
Starting point for her are classical jewels and the notion of preciousness and personal value. She connects the contrasts of natural and artificially manufactured materials, and combines known jewellery forms with unusual materials into hybrids. She often uses her own manner of faceting materials such as wood or the so-called reconstructed materials into her own gem forms. Reconstructed materials are made from the cutting dust of usually semi-precious stones or, for example, coral and then together with a binding agent compacted into easily workable slabs or blocks.
It’s about establishing another kind of harmony than the known in supposedly known objects. By adding something to a beautiful old piece of wood or plastic it turns into a little treasure of increased personal value. For Stephanie a piece of jewelry must have presence and attract attention; the jewel being about the personality of the wearer, should be individual and often have humor.
Manon van Kouswijk - Dutch graduated 1995:
As inspiration she focuses on everyday objects and archetypical forms. Her scope of work and starting points include things like the silver spoon, the white table cloth, and stationery. Jewelry is but a part of her work, and in that area it is the archetypes like the pearl or bead necklace that she comments on or makes visible certain aspects around the wearing of jewels - as in her neckpiece here titled “Once”, suggesting a classical pearl necklace but having been knotted without the pearls. To me it also seems to suggest memories faded away completely and lost.
Iris Nieuwenburg - Dutch graduated 2002:
As a little girl she had always been fascinated by dressing-up. Here she is playing on the tradition of the folkloristic. The ladies on these brooches are wearing the typical traditional Zeeland headdress ; this is the original version of the Zeeland headjewel - it’s those weird square plates of gold sticking out on either side of these ladies’ foreheads that look like rear-view mirrors.
Memories exist out of time, are unique, valuable, + irreplacable. With her work she tries to make a combination between valuable memories and valuable jewelry, while preserving the admiration of the jewel as well as the memory. Her work is a play on traditional classic jewelry such as diamond encrusted brooches or awards and trophies.
Iris has perfected her own technique of lacquer work that gives the pieces an enamel-like appearance. To make her assemblages she creates combinations with old motifs from antique Victorian picture paper or postcards, together with old ornaments, medallions, doll house things, her Grandmother’s jewelry, children’s toys, old teaspoons, antique carved flowers, mother-of-pearl buttons. She cuts up the element and images, rearranges and reassembles them with traditional goldsmithing techniques.
Katja Prins - Dutch graduated 1997:
She works around the intimate relationship with the body as in a necklace with flexible hollow latex rubber elements from her graduation series; the little lumps on the chain are pearls covered by the latex slathered onto it, or as in a brooch from a couple of years later, using silk cocoons and latex.
Later she further extends and incorporates the relationship aspect with medical or technical devices. You could say she tells stories about the body as an instrument or machine, about instruments and machines as extensions of the body, and the manipulation of our bodies as something that can be changed and sculpted. She sees our body as being an extension of the mind that is always in relationship with its surroundings and the environment.
Not being too specific about her work she wants people to discover their own stories in the work and interpret them in their own way.
Constanze Schreiber - German-born graduated 2004:
Her work inspiration is based on human needs and longings, the idea of how we deal with our fears in attempting to create stability. In her anchor piece the anchor stands for the common symbol for hope - and as the fragile blue coral suggests - all attempts to invoke that feeling of stability outside of ourselves through rituals or other things, don’t really help.
She made a whole series of brooches and neckpieces of recycled fur in varying outline forms of classical jewels that she has generously filled with lead, so that their weight makes us aware of the animal it once was.
Her interest in the rich history of antique jewelry guides her in her focus on the symbolism inherent in antique jewelry around essential themes as love, life, and death.
Francis Willemstijn - Dutch graduated 2004:
Francis shows her connection with Dutch history and her love of that heritage. Her work is like little depictions of that period, a period whose traces may soon have disappeared completely. She resurrects those glorious times in which this tiny country was a naval power, engaged in conquest and incredible sea battles. It’s about Holland’s shipping history in the 17th century - the Dutch “Golden Century” , about traditional costumes and jewelry, as well as the old customs.
Francis imbibes poorer materials with value through the time and energy consuming work of hand-crafting, which is her reaction to the hasty consumer oriented society in which traditions are rapidly fading away.
The name of the Brooch “Madder” is also the name for the dye that comes from the meekrap plant that was grown in Zeeland for a long time. Its raw dye extract had the typical red-brown color as in this brooch, but in combination with other ingredients it produced the typical bright red known from Dutch textiles. In the brooch Francis used a. o. enamel and little raw …
Studio jeweler, Mary Preston, placed her work in the context of other jewelers who, like herself, embrace and abstract motifs such as lace and other traditional forms of ornamentation in the making of their work. This use of the Decorative Arts as subject matter represents a fresh and expanding lexicon in today’s contemporary jewelry. Aptly described by jewelry historian Bruce Metcalf as one of the jewelers”creating the ‘next moment’ in jewelry,” artist Mary Preston finds inspiration in historical pieces and lost crafts for her beautiful creations.
In the case of her latest body of work, Preston seeks to “reinterpret the familiarity, formality and symbolism of the lace bow / ribbon as used in historical jewelry,” in a series of brooches, some silver, some gold, each combined with various gemstones. Progressing from the intricate, filigree nature of her earlier jewelry, Preston’s new work features broad surfaces of lightly textured gold or blackened silver, twisted and coiled to achieve flowing, voluminous forms, edges scalloped to connote the materials of reference. Complimenting the black and gold metal, color is threaded though the various layers of each brooch, like needlepoint sewn through these sensuous forms.
A joint presentation between these two artists was a highlight of SOFA NY in 2006.David says he builds clear, often figurative pictures, recognizable at first sight. These pieces, often produced in small series, make conversation points, make it easy for people to talk to each other, to step over barriers.
He’s attracted to the plain, ugly or singularly possessed things that we find around us and gives to them the possibility to become loved, liked or at least taken seriously, to be transformed, to begin again with a new independent character.
He hardly ever refines the materials he uses. Rather, he lets the associative possibility that lie within the materials serve the observer. This should look easy, like a magic trick. He tries to intervene with the materials as little as possible.
Themes of interest include the closeness of the wearer to the works, the constant change of context through movement and wearing in public space; the choice of clothing and placement on the body and the often spontaneous planned interaction between the viewer and the wearer of the work.
Helen notes that we are drowning in objects and materials that masquerade as other things. It is hard not to gasp in wonder at the barrage of possible choices, particularly in Europe. So she gathers things and combines them haphazardly into a world of her own material invention.
“My practice as a jeweler, if it mimics anything, it is the way we see the natural world, and the meaning of our efforts to perceive it, rather than its appearance. What I am interested in showing is that the natural and the man-made are inextricably mixed in contemporary experience.”
Some recent works are preoccupied with an interest in plvspace=”5″ hspace=”5″ acing figurative elements in constructed environments, particularly in the brooches where she is building little landscapes or world. These combinations of figures, elements and materials aim to evoke an atmosphere, rather than a narrative.
On Friday, October 28, 2005, Dutch artist Ruudt Peters entertained attendees at SOFA Chicago with his presentation entitled Philosopher’s Stone. He used imagery and terminology from the medieval practice of alchemy, which attempted to turn base metals into gold.
Ruudt explained he was a member of the Dutch generation of artists who began working in the 1970s, when he and his peers explored a variety of materials to make jewelry, refusing to work with the traditional gold and silver or precious stones. Instead, they used materials like aluminum and rubber to create necklaces and bracelets.
Moonstone
As Ruudt described his work over the years, he talked about what inspired him, what he then created, and how he presented his work. As he followed this cycle of inspiration, creation, and presentation, he produced an eclectic, varied, and beautiful body of work.
While he creates amazing and wonderful jewelry, he consistently raises the bar (and, perhaps, an eyebrow or two) in the way he presents his work.
For example, at SOFA, Ruudt’s brooches from the series called Azoth (the Philosopher’s stone) — featuring layers of multicolored polyester surrounding a black, oxidized hollow silver core–were presented submerged in individual bowls/tanks of water anchored in tall metal stands, so the viewer could see the work about waist-high. Ruudt noted the water worked as a magnifier of the jewelry. (I didn’t see many hands plunging in without permission, either!)
Thenardiet
This installation was featured at Ornamentum Gallery, located in Hudson, NY, and owned by AJF members Laura Lapachin and her husband Stefan Friedemann.Ruudt acknowledged that he doesn’t present his work in a way that makes it easy for the viewer to touch. He wants you to approach with respect. He showed examples of previous installations where his jewelry was hidden behind gauze netting tents–or, nestled in little pillows under a handing lamp–looking just like a nursery setting (”They’re my babies,” Ruudt smiled.)–or in laboratory vials.
When I talked with Laura Lapachin about the ingenuity of Ruudt’s presentations, she told me Ruudt was one of the pioneers of this innovative way of presenting work, which has come to be known in the profession, appropriately, as The Dutch Smooth.
And while Ruudt now does use precious materials in his work, he’s likely to hide it–for example, by covering silver with layers of polyester, which rub off as the jewelry is worn, revealing the more precious layer over time. (More metaphors than space to present!)
In closing, let’s listen in as Ruudt expresses his own philosophy in a few gem-like sound bites: “Every piece of jewelry conceals what it adorns,” he said. “Jewelry is highly communicative,” he explained, “you have to come close to experience it.” And yet…”If you grasp at things desirously,” he cautioned, “they will retreat.”
Contributed by AJF member Jane Shannon
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Noam Elyashiv’s work is pure, intensely modern and elegantly minimal. Each piece, seemingly abstract yet rooted in autobiography, hints at much deeper meaning and in her words, “leaves breathing space for the viewer’s curiosity and personal interpretation.” Recognized as one the best emergent studio jewelers, Elyashiv was AJF’s featured speaker at SOFA NYC 2005.Elyashiv has an unerring eye for simple form and an uncommon appreciation for the creative process — “the constant dialog between the idea, the hand and the object.” She works on many pieces simultaneously and sees the time spent in the studio as a quest that requires constant journeying through the “in-between” of many pieces.
She is a working artist and professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. Intensely interested in the creative process; through her work she explores the constant dialog between idea, hand, and object. For her “the entire process is the most creative part of the piece – drawings, photographs, writings are all equally important. The final piece is only one glimpse into a deeper thought.”
Church NecklaceEminent jeweler and jewelry historian David Watkins commenting on her work noted,” The pervading sense is of relaxed restraint, tempered by a joy in plain expression – so much can be achieved by so little. Let the metal work, why push harder? The resonances are completely coherent. The pieces achieve a dry, archeological, out-of-the sand, biblical sonority – simplicity and conviction make all the right connections.”
The characteristics she believes collectors should have are open-mindedness, a developed and unique perspective, and the ability to take creative risks. Her award winning work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the U.S., Europe and Israel and can be seen at Sienna Gallery, Lennox, MA.
Contributed by AJF member Sally von Bargen
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Felieke van der Leest spoke to a full room of SOFA 2004 attendees in Chicago about her whimsical work and the inspiration for it. There is so much more to her work than meets the eye.”Actually the pieces I make are very simple,” says Van der Leest. “You can immediately identify with them. I consciously choose to design jewelery that you don’t need a degree in art history to understand. For many people, artists are from another planet. I don’t come from an artistic family which explains, I think, my need to make accessible jewelery.”
Van der Leest gets her ideas from every day experiences. The only criteria are that the design inspires the same kind of humor. “I make a sketch of every idea and if after looking at it twice it isn’t funny anymore, I throw it away.” In order to keep having ideas, it’s important to have a playful approach. For example she knits all her gifts.
Symbolism and memories are often what jewelery is about. And yet the symbolism Van der Leest uses is of a completely different kind. Her designs do not appeal to nostalgia or sentiment, they are about the comic lightness of being. Just the way they are made is funny already. Van der Leest doesn’t weld her work but knits and crochets it. She has a very elegant technique using the thinnest of threads and executing each piece perfectly. This makes them wonderful to look at while at the same time, because of the subject matter — frog legs as a brooch or a pink piglet’s behind for a pendant — hilariously funny.
Vera Siemund’s work invites us to ponder a provocatively beautiful paradox — a precious balance between the historic continuum of the decorative arts and radically fresh ideas made manifest in expertly crafted jewelry.Siemund is a young avant-garde German artist who contemporizes classic forms and reminds us of the elegance of things past. Historic ornaments and classical references have long been the focus of her interest. She is interested in their associative power, and holds a deep appreciation for the richness, detail, beauty and workmanship of old jewelry. Yet she is quick to comment that “these do not belong to the world today. I often work with quotations from the 18/19th century. I pick out pieces which are already eclectic themselves…with roots in history and connections to the present.”
Recently Siemund was the featured artist in Metalsmith magazine where, noted art historian, Toni Greenbaum, commented, “Her work is exquisite, yet it exceeds mere surface appeal by also eloquently commenting on the past by juxtaposing selected motifs from classical antiquity, architecture, textiles, costume and botanical gardens.” The Art Jewelry Forum agrees and was honored to sponsor her presentation at SOFA NYC, 2004. Her work can be seen at Jeweler’s Werk Galerie, Washington DC and Galerie Marzee, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Contributed by AJF member Sally von Bargen
Under Construction
Elegance and energy are two words that best describe the creative life and work of Donald Friedlich.Every piece he creates demonstrates his superior craftsmanship and crystal clear artistic vision. His is elegant jewelry that utilizes simple clear geometry while pushing the boundaries of precious and non-precious materials.
He honored the standing room only crowd at the 2002 Chicago SOFA exhibition by presenting a survey of his work and demonstrating his energetic devotion to his craft through his advocacy and leadership in the art jewelry field.
His recent work often incorporates expertly colored, shaped and textured glass. The unique integration of studio glass and precision metalsmithing marries the paradox of traditional glassmaking (large, noisy hot shops teaming with people) with the creation of studio jewelry (a solitary jeweler working alone at a bench). He enjoys the free flowing collaboration within the glass shop and the uncharted challenge of using glass to serve the demands of jewelry’s intimate scale. Don’s observation is that “the scale of jewelry demands excellence in all aspects, especially when incorporating glass.”
Friedlich received his BFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from Rhode Island School of Design in 1982 and was honored three years later as the school’s outstanding recent graduate. His many awards include a National Endowment for the Arts New England Regional Fellowship and the 2001 Renwick Gallery Acquisition Award at the Smithsonian Craft Show.
Don is a tireless evangelist for his craft. He has served as President of the Society of North American Goldsmiths. In 2003 he was the first jeweler to be an Artist in Residence at The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass. During 2004 in Australia, Friedlich was a featured speaker at an international jewelry conference in Melbourne and an Artist in Residence in both the Glass and Goldsmithing Departments of Canberra School of Art at Australian National University.
His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, Corning Museum of Glass, American Craft Museum, Mint Museum of Craft and Design, and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
When asked his advice for collectors, Friedlich says simply “Wear it, start conversations with it, and thoughtfully pass it on.”
Contributed by AJF member Sally von Bargen
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Art lovers often ask artists, “Where do your images come from?” At SOFA 2001 artist Nancy Worden, wearing a vintage dress given to her by her grandmother, treated attendees to a 30 year chronology of her creative influences and creative output.Worden credited the encouragement of her family and the mentorship of vspace=”5″ hspace=”5″ influential instructors with fostering her youthful creative urges. She grew up in small-town Ellensburg, Washington where her art-loving parents were professors at Central Washington University. In her family, though, it was her grandmother’s love of “nice things” that inspired her deep appreciation for jewelry.
Nancy’s creative life as a studio jeweler began when she was a gifted high school student taking college classes from Professor Ken Cory at C.W.U., who reluctantly allowed her to take his class and whose program was significantly influenced by Ramona Solberg and Don and Merrily Tompkins. Cory challenged her to explore concept and meaning in her jewelry design. Cory’s mentorship grew into a deep friendship. After his untimely death, Worden curated a major retrospective exhibition and co-authored a publication of Cory’s work.
Worden credits University of Georgia master craftsman Gary Noffke with stregthening her technical competence and teaching her to work intuitively. She credits the years she spent at a jewelry store bench with instilling the ability to work quickly.
While working for the Northwest Folk Life Festival, Nancy was exposed to a multitude of cultural forms of costume and adornment. Across all cultures jewelry is a personalized art form used to communicate real or desired status, commemorate significant achievements, events or rites of passage. She credits this experience with motivating her to work in a more personal and narrative style, to creatively assert the relationship between her artistic expression and her cultural context as a contemporary American woman. Her work demonstrates an ability to articulate her life experiences, deep curiosities and heartfelt passions while simultaneously striking a universal chord among an appreciative audience.
Today Worden’s career is that of a relevant and established artist with a master’s ability to deliver cultural commentary. A retrospective of her work is coming in 2008 to the Tacoma Museum of Art. Her work is in major private and public collections in the U.S. and Europe and has been published in books and Ornament, Metalsmith, American Craft and Sculpture magazines. She lives in Seattle with her husband, daughter, and three cats.
To collectors she offers this advice: “Buy things you absolutely love, understand that you are a caretaker of the object, plan for a proper home for the work upon your demise, and most important — WEAR IT!
Contributed by AJF member Sally von Bargen
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In 2000 Giovanni Corvaja traveled from his studio in Padua Italy to exhibit his work at SOFA NYC and speak as a guest of the Art Jewelry Forum. Mr. Corvaja is an internationally recognized studio goldsmith. He describes himself as “extremely passionate about the magic and unrealized possibilities of gold.” True to his passion, his work amazes collectors with the beauty of masterful craftsmanship and profound complexity. He creates fascinating universes within the small space of a brooch. Nothing is hidden, yet it requires a very close look fully appreciate “the magic of infinity” that his work explores and achieves. He asks that his collectors be curious. Corvaja work rewards a curious mind. The closer you look the more beautiful his work becomes.
Corvaja demonstrates an expert command of every aspect of goldsmithing, and is recognized for a distinctive mastery of working with ultra fine gold wire, colored alloys and granulation. He has exhibited in countless solo and group exhibitions worldwide and his work is held collections of the most renowned museums. He studied with the master goldsmith Francesco Pavan and attended the Royal College of Art in London. Currently he is creating on a new body of work inspired by the mythology of the Golden Fleece.