November 2024, Part 2
Right now, we all could use a treat. It feels good to get a terrific piece of art jewelry for ourselves while celebrating and supporting artists and the galleries who show them!
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: Galeria Reverso, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Paula Crespo (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Manuel Vilhena
Retail price: €500
Another juniper wood ring! The wood comes from the Austrian high mountains. The ring itself aims at depicting part of the Andromeda constellation and questioning our place in this cosmos. A reminder.
Gallery: Four Gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Karin Roy Andersson (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Jenny Jansson
Retail price: €390
In her jewelry pieces Jenny Jansson tells a story of a romanticized view of Swedish traditions and culture—but something is just a little bit off. Images of traditional culture are paired with flower wreaths and buttercups. In recent years the debate around immigration has brought up the topic of what it takes to get to call oneself Swedish. Do you have to like pickled herring, know how to assemble flat-pack furniture, or dance around the Midsummer pole? Traditions can have an important role in creating inclusivity within a community, culture, and tradition, but can also be used as a tool for exclusion and alienation.
Gallery: Mahnaz Collection, New York, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Bella Neyman (click the name for email)
Artist: Jesse Monongya (Navajo/Hopi)
Retail price: US$6,800
Made by the late Jesse Monongya (Navajo/Hopi) (1952–2024), one of the most prominent Native American jewelers, early in his career. The son of early modern artist jeweler Preston Monongye, Jesse made work distinguished by his mastery of inlay. He created bracelets, necklaces, pendants, bolo ties, and earrings inlaid with the finest coral, turquoise, Acoma jet, sugilite, lapis, ivory, and more. He enjoyed using diamonds and created exquisite displays of color. Animals inspired him, and the bear was his closest jewelry companion. Monongya is recognized for the celestial night skies he inlaid, filled with flying comets and views of Monument Valley. He said he was inspired by the dreamlike stories that his grandmother told him as a young child. This ring is no exception, with the bold, graphic image on its face, continuing down both sides of the shank. Monongya’s much-awarded work can be found in the Heard Museum, MOMA, the Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian, and many other institutions. A similar ring is featured in Jesse Monongya: Opal Bears and Lapis Skies, by Lois Sherr Dubin (2002), on page 134.
Gallery: Platina, Stockholm, Sweden (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Sofia Björkman (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: matt lambert
Retail price: US$900
In this new body of work, matt lambert investigates animacy, the relationship of the human hand to the nonhuman in practice, and asks: “What if we just let go of the bird and jump into the bushes?” That statement views artistic practice as a process for the animation of the abstract, to make physical points for embodied dialogue. It takes theory and practice together, to form praxis. The brooch with a hand holding flowers can be seen as a connection between the thought and practice, the spoken word and the made object, mouth to hand.
Gallery: Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, MD (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Allison Gulick (click the name for email)
Artist: Chelsea Nanfelt Rowe
Retail price: US$500
Chelsea Nanfelt Rowe, a US-based craft artist and jeweler, earned her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2024. She examines how materials reflect human nature, uncovering the stories and personalities we project onto everyday objects and detritus. Nanfelt Rowe is an RJM Artist Project and Ethical Metalsmiths Education Committee member. Her recent exhibitions include the RJM Artist Project at the Metal Museum (Memphis, TN, US), and Refined (Nacogdoches, TX, US). She has received grants such as the SNAG Educational Endowment Scholarship and the VCU Graduate Research Grant. Her article “A New Ethics of Materials: Collective Material Impact” was also recently published in Metalsmith magazine.
Gallery: Pistachios Contemporary Art Jewelry, Chicago, IL, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: The Pistachios Team (click the name for email)
Artist: Laurel Fulton
Retail price: US$495
Laurel Fulton’s work has a musical sensibility, resembling instruments or other objects that have functional, movable parts. Conceptually, the artist is exploring this idea of (non)functionality, and utilizing bright sterling silver and acrylic to create a body of work that feels both familiar and peculiar at the same time.
Gallery: Gravers Lane Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Chloe Le Pichon (click the name for email)
Artist: Everett Hoffman
Retail price: Each US$410
Everett Hoffman made these Smile Signet Rings especially for Gravers Lane Gallery’s exhibition Serious Fun, curated by @nightshift.studio. These carved “chonky” silver rings are beautifully executed, weighty, and naively cute—spot-on for the Serious Fun theme. Come and try them on @graverslanegallery. Hoffman currently teaches Jewelry and Metalsmithing at RISD and Tyler School of Art and Architecture. He was a finalist for the 2024 Young Artist Award.
Gallery: Aaron Faber Gallery, New York, NY, US (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Patricia Kiley Faber (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Pawel Kaczynski
Retail price: US$950
Pawel Kaczynski is a Polish artist and jeweler whose innovative work with fabric and metal is noteworthy. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland, with a specialization in fabric and fashion and jewelry, and has been designing jewelry since 1990. He has been a member of the Polish Sculptors Association since 1992, and, since 1995, a member of the Goldsmithing Artists’ Association. His work explores new forms of expression in jewelry, and he is best known for his work in steel, silver, and gold. He is also the co-author of the artistic venture called “Grupa Sześć” (Group Six), which popularizes the idea of unique jewelry.
Gallery: Zu design, Adelaide, Australia (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Jane Bowden (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Blanche Tilden
Retail price: AUS$3,200
Hosier neckpiece is at Zu design for Seven Colours. Multiple-exposure color photographs by Marcus Scholz are starting points for Blanche Tilden’s distinctive jewelry. Made with clear and colored borosilicate glass, silver, and anodized titanium, this series explores links between jewelry, photography, architecture, and the body. Eminently wearable, each piece suggests a moment of calm, in contrast to the constant hustle of the urban landscape. Tilden will be giving an artist talk about her work, “In Conversation,” with Rebecca Evans, curator of Decorative Arts and Design, AGSA, Tuesday, October 29, 12:30 p.m., Radford Auditorium. Additional info.
Gallery: Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h, bijoux et objets contemporains, Montreal, Canada (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Noel Guyomarc’h (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Aurélie Guillaume
Retail price: CAN$1,975
Aurélie Guillaume’s creations invite us into her playful and poetic world. The Trésor, as the piece is called, is to carry it.
Gallery: Galeria Tereza Seabra, Lisbon, Portugal (click the gallery name to link to its website)
Contact: Tereza Seabra (click the gallerist’s name for email)
Artist: Verena Sieber-Fuchs
Retail price: €8,000, plus shipping
Verena Sieber-Fuchs is an artist from Switzerland, based in Zurich. She is a master of crocheting her everyday life. She is a furious collector of everything that surrounds her, from medicine blister packs to orange paper, stamps, beads, etc. Everything is ritualistically kept with care to speak about pleasure, sorrows, or politics. It’s a game with all kinds of materials and above all with no precious ones to make them precious. This piece is part of her solo exhibition at Galeria Tereza Seabra, The Year of the Revolution, which runs until November 23, 2024.
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