Hoping to get some idea of the ramifications of fine art’s turn to the handmade, I started reading By Hand: The Use of Craft in Contemporary Art, edited by Shu Hung and Joseph Magliaro. As the editors write in their preface:
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I’ve been trying to understand a trend, not just in art jewelry, but pop culture in general. The sharp, angular shapes of handguns and semi-automatic rifles as graphic black silhouettes or cheeky, bubblegum pink outlines are everywhere. T-shirts, decals, pendants and even cufflinks – guns, apparently, are ‘in.’ Karl Lagerfeld, Gunshoe Now I will be
Kambui Olujimi, Untitled from The Blackout Collection, 2010-11, mixed media, photo: Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco Each sculpture, a hybrid of equal part necklace and handcuff, hang on the wall throughout the gallery. The show is tidy, with each piece staying closely within a simple format. But within that format variations arise allowing for an
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In the early 1990s word traveled quickly through collectors of contemporary jewelry, museum curators, and the craft world at large that a major collection of modernist jewelry had “escaped” the United States. Collective gnashing of teeth decried “the one that got away.” The collection had been assembled by Mark McDonald, Mark Isaacson, and Ralph Cutler, partners in
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Conferences stimulate the development of critical discourse in the craft world. In the United States, the American Craft Council, the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, the Society of North American Goldsmiths all organize craft-specific gatherings that fuel ideas and provide face-to-face networking. Craft is a small fish in a big pond at
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