June 2024, Part 2
There are so many reasons to purchase art jewelry…
- Celebrate that hard-earned promotion
- Honor a once-in-a-lifetime occasion
- Pay tribute to a major accomplishment
- Commemorate the beginning of a new relationship or the end of one
- Pounce on the perfect piece to round out an aspect of your collection
- Or invest in a treat for yourself—just because
Art Jewelry Forum’s international gallery supporters celebrate and exhibit art jewelry. Our bi-monthly On Offer series allows this extensive network of international galleries to showcase extraordinary pieces personally selected to tempt and inspire you. Take a look. You’re bound to find a fantastic piece you simply can’t live without! (Please contact the gallery directly for inquiries.)
Gallery: Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, MD, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Allison Gulick (click the name for email)
Artist: Ellyse Bendillo
Retail price: US$500
Jewelry artist Ellyse Bendillo translates illustrations into fine jewelry using traditional enameling techniques like champlevé and plique-à-jour. After graduating from Tyler School of Art with a BFA in metals/jewelry/CAD, she found work on Philadelphia’s historical Jeweler’s Row repairing gold jewelry, focusing on antique enamel restoration. Inspired by her walks both in nature and in the city, Bendillo uses enamel’s graphic qualities to emphasize shape and pattern in her production work. Made during her recent emerging artist residency at the BJC, this piece was inspired by a birding friend’s frustration over the elusive cedar waxwing that seemed to be showing itself to everyone but her.
Gallery: Sienna Patti, Lennox, MA, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sienna Patti (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Julia Maria Künnap
Retail price: US$8,400
Subtle, silent, and seductive, Estonian artist Julia Maria Künnap’s work is as familiar as it is foreign, as dark as it is light. Stones drip, balloon, and curve; blades of grass and swaths of paint become transparent and eternal. So often, a discussion of objects that exhibit clear technical ingenuity starts with the how: How was that made? How long did that take? The desire to understand the execution supersedes everything else. It is as if once you know how it is made, you will see and understand the truth of it.
Künnap asks us to put that conversation aside for a moment and revel in the fiction, in the poetry, all the while implicitly understanding that these are not ordinary things. There are no technical tricks or deceptions here, at least not any more than what can be found in traditionally carved stones. The tools that a stone carver anywhere in the world would use are the same; it is the mind and hands that are unique. “The technical virtuosity is only a tool to express myself, never a goal by itself,” writes Künnap. “Like a ballerina’s jump—it’s beautiful if she jumps high, but it’s always just a tool to express the mood of a dance.” We, as wearers and viewers, bring something to the objects as well—a certain expectation for the beauty inherent in gemstones. Künnap skillfully brings us that beauty while simultaneously stopping to mark and measure time, to play with our expectations of the material and its tendency for stasis. The beauty becomes extravagantly distorted but remains intimate. Each drip, drop, or stroke belies the strength of the stone and begins to tell a story. “To light a candle is to cast a shadow,” wrote Ursula K. Le Guin, and Künnap takes this to heart, giving us the light and the shadow in one.
Gallery: Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Ken Irish (click the name for email)
Artist: Randy Shull
Retail price: US$400
Sitting at the crossroads of artist Randy Shull’s passions for art, architecture, and design, the Hormigón series—the word means concrete in Spanish—elevates the classic building block design into a wearable piece of art jewelry. Raised by a father who was a master carpenter and a builder, Shull began his art studies with furniture. He received his BFA in furniture design from the Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, NY, in 1986. Over time, his work has evolved to include painting, sculpture, and architectural design. In 2010, he cofounded Pink Dog Creative, a redevelopment of a former warehouse into a mixed-use space with 20 artist studios, two restaurants, and retail shops. Shull splits his time between Asheville, NC, and Mérida, Mexico.
Gallery: Platina, Stockholm, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Sofia Bjorkman (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Åsa Lockner
Retail price: US$2,500
This necklace belongs to the series Crown Jewels, which Åsa Lockner has been working on for several years. The work of the Swedish artist is often a collage in which she picks up traces and uses parts from earlier projects, layered and applied, to test her reasoning. Ovals, drops, stones, and pierced metal serve as components of a puzzle used to achieve a balance between the discordant, asymmetrical, and twisted. Discovering harmony and beauty in a piece of contemporary jewelry demands a broad pallette of material samples.
Gallery: In The Gallery at Brooklyn Metal Works, Brooklyn, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Aminata Conteh (click the name for email)
Artist: Jessica Andersen
Retail price: US$800
Jessica Andersen’s heritage of collecting can be traced back to her grandmother, who encouraged all of her children to collect because “it could be worth something someday.” The collection of Oneida spoons which make up Other Half were gifted to the artist by her Aunt Carol as a continuation of this family tradition. The necklace bears the impression of Andersen’s hand, as well as its components’ previous life, with the aspiration of enhancing the value that her grandmother and aunt envisioned these spoons would one day accumulate.
Gallery: Four Gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Karin Roy Andersson (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Anna Rikkinen
Retail price: €1,000
Anna Rikkinen collects impressions from the past and present, and thoughts about the future. Her works mix Dutch portraits from the 17th and 18th centuries, her childhood in a small Finnish village, and ornaments from traditional African clothing. The works take us on a journey through history, across the world and perhaps beyond the horizon. In her newest series of work, Draped, Rikkinen investigated the nature of ribbons. Ribbons and bows carry many connotations. “I wanted to find out what kind of power ribbons and bows hold,” states the maker. “I wanted to explore not only their decorative nature but also the links to femininity and masculinity in fashion and in art.”
Gallery: Aaron Faber Gallery, New York, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Patricia Kiley Faber (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Enric Majoral
Retail price: US$495
Enric Majoral (b. 1949) is a self-taught jewelry artist whose seemingly casual jewels evoke the natural forms and spirit of his island environment, off the coast of Spain. Formentera is where life, the sea, fashion, and art intersect.
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h, bijoux et objets contemporains, Montreal, Canada (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Mirjam Hiller
Retail price: CAN$2,975
The quest for “intensity and enchantment” is one of Mirjam Hiller’s central themes. “I explore nature and architecture. I observe and absorb the world around me. Indulging my curiosity and sensation, I discover chaos and order, beauty and bizarreness, unexpected and familiar things. I see compelling colors, shapes, and structures.” To make her jewelry, she first saws a piece of sheet or copper steel by hand, and then bends or folds it into the desired shape. For Hiller, limiting herself to only one material is a challenge, but one that inspires her. Her goal is to create pieces of jewelry which, when worn, exude a charming vividness. “The finished piece should surprise, fascinate, and amaze me. Like a maelstrom, the piece of jewelry has to catch my eye and take me into its world, touch my senses. It should be something unique, curious, something beautiful, exotic, but also something familiar. It should invite people to explore it, collect it, and wear it.”
Gallery: Mahnaz Collection, New York, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Bella Neyman (click the name for email)
Artist: Coralynn Pence
Retail price: US$8,500
This is a gem of a jewel from one of the pioneers of the studio jewelry movement. While this piece does not feature a found object from one of Pence’s travels, like so many of her pieces did, it is emblematic of her style with its exquisite wire work, use of high-karat gold, and almost 15-carat aquamarine. This brooch was likely a private commission for a client, one of about 500 that she is said to have completed in her career. Pence was a revered educator, whose students included Ramona Solberg, and a jeweler working in the Northwest of the United States. Pence was also a founding member of the Northwest Designer Craftsmen (1954), with other prominent jewelers such as Robert Sperry and Ruth Penington.
Gallery: Galeria Reverso, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Paula Crespo (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Lin Cheung
Retail price: €1,140
“Keep is a wry look at how I store and protect my own jewelry,” says Lin Cheung. “Unceremoniously tucked in corners of plastic grip-seal bags, wrapped like a slice of cake in kitchen paper, scrunched up in a tissue, folded in a handkerchief, or secured with paper and an elastic band are some of the ways the jewelry I own and wear is stashed and stowed.”
Gallery: Funaki, Melbourne, Australia (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Katie Scott (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Katrin Feulner
Retail price: AUS$3,500
After a decade of working mostly with found steel objects and using slow hand-making processes, Katrin Feulner has recently begun to include more traditionally valuable materials such as gold, silver, and bronze, as well as techniques such as powder coating and casting. This particular work is pared-back and refined, with a muscular directness and simplicity signaling the maturity of a maker who has a natural fluency and confidence with her métier.
Gallery: Zu design, Adelaide, NSW, Australia (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Jane Bowden (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Leonie Westbrook
Retail price: AUS$880
This Textas and Tomboys—How Long? neckpiece was inspired by Leonie Westbrook’s childhood, and by witnessing her child learn how to do Tomboy stitch. We all remember this process, and just continuing to make an endless tube. “When I look at this piece,” says gallerist Jane Bowden, “I am reminded of the precious moments I shared with my own family learning these skills.”
Gallery: Gravers Lane Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Chloë Le Pichon (click the name for email)
Artist: Seth Michael Carlson
Retail price: US $5,570
This cuff showcases the beauty of both the animal it represents as well as the beauty of an intricately hand-fabricated piece of jewelry. The marriage of the materials and the way that it sits on the body creates a harmony between the piece and the wearer.
Gallery: Thereza Pedrosa Gallery, Asolo, Italy (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: Thereza Pedrosa (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Beate Klockmann
Retail price: From €7,320 to €10,980
Introducing the ring-objects collection by Beate Klockmann: One-of-a-Couple. The rings in this series feature pairs of rings that form unique couples. Each pair shares a connection yet maintains distinct differences. What sets these rings apart is their versatile design—they can be worn in either direction. With no defined bottoms, every end serves as a top.
Gallery: Pistachios Contemporary Art Jewelry, Chicago, IL, US (click the gallery name to link to the website)
Contact: The Pistachios Team (click the team name for email)
Artist: Emily Rogstad
Retail price: US$775
North Carolina-based artist Emily Rogstad has created a sizable pair of floral gold vermeil earrings that feel reminiscent of a line drawing. The playfulness of positive and negative space is enhanced by the whimsical movement these earrings have.
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