Interviews

AJF commissions various kinds of critically engaged writing about the field, including interviews with jewelers, curators, writers, collectors and other individuals who have an impact on contemporary art jewelry, or something important to say about it.

21 May 2011

Namita Gupta Wiggers in Conversation

Gabriel Craig

I think being trained as a jeweler has a huge impact on my curatorial practice. When I look at objects I think about the fabrication, I think about the making. I'm very tuned in to materials, form, weight and tactility in a way that did not come from my art-history training at all. In art history we're taught to look, in anthropology you're taught to think about use and cultural place, but it really is through the years of making that I became tuned into the physical and bodily experience of objects. more...

05 March 2011

What's Modernism Got to Do With It? Mark McDonald in Conversation

Ron Porter

I see the auction as a close of a phase in my career. I'd like to get away from the physical challenges of dealing in furniture for example. Also, I'd like to focus on helping to develop significant collections of modernist art jewelry or at least to add pieces from the period to serious collections of art jewelry. I would like to continue to educate people and maybe they will 'back track' to appreciate and add examples of modernist jewelry into their collections. more...

03 October 2010

A Rose By Any Other Name: The 2Roses in Conversation

Jillian Moore

We both come from an old-world traditional approach to the arts, having been apprenticed at a very young age into the arts and working professionally since our early teen years. We literally grew up within the studio system. Working communally and collaborating comes very naturally to us. We like to say '2Roses are better than one!' The impact of our life-long collaboration is that the skills each of us bring to the relationship allow us to express ourselves with a much richer creative vocabulary than either of us could individually. more...

20 July 2010

Lauren Kalman Talks About Dichotomies of Place and Object

Lauren Kalman

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. more...

23 April 2010

Questions and Answers: Deganit Stern Schocken Talks About No Problem(?)

Deganit Stern Schocken

The exhibition's name contrasts the difficulty implied in the word 'problem' with the easy nonchalance of the expression 'no problem.' Creative expression is borne out of the tensions that arise, such as between seriousness and superficiality, or between the real and ever-present problems – especially in a country such as Israel – and the vernacular of indifference that is so common. more...

19 April 2010

Who's Afraid of Contemporary Jewelry? Gijs Bakker in Conversation

Damian Skinner

That's also my aim with Chi ha paura . . .?, to make a bridge between the design world and the jewelry world. Because the jewelry world is a very special, limited, closed society internationally, we're very closed and the design world has no idea that it exists. For instance, ten or fifteen years ago I went on a lecture tour in Brazil with Ron Arad and Konstantin Grcic, both of whom now have a piece in this collection. We listened to each other's lectures and they didn't have a clue that jewelry was my background. They knew me a designer and they knew me as the co-founder of Droog Design. more...

05 March 2010

The French Connection: Benjamin Lignel Talks About Also Known As Jewellery*

Benjamin Lignel

This exhibition features work by seventeen makers who are either French, or have lived in France for long enough to fool the baker when buying their baguette in the morning. The work selected was created, with very few exceptions, within three years of the project's inception and is meant to showcase what we described in the catalog as the 'more conceptual' branch of French contemporary jewelry: i.e. jewelry which puts the practice itself at the heart of its experiments. more...

23 December 2009

Bruce Pepich in Conversation

Rachel Carren

I would suggest that collectors examine not only how a potential museum recipient exhibits its collection and how often works come out, but also take into consideration the kinds of education programs produced in conjunction with these shows. How will the museum live with these works after they enter the collection? What will the museum's programming do for the understanding of the field, the advancement of the artists' careers and the encouragement of further collecting and new artists? We currently have collectors living in 30 different states whose works come together here as a historic documentation of the development of this field at this time in history. more...