In a joint presentation by Arnoldsche and AJF during Schmuck 2023, Susan Cummins and Toni Greenbaum gave a brief talk about In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture and North by Northwest: The Jewelry of Laurie Hall at Galerie Handwerk on Friday, March 10, 2023. Below this video of Laurie Hall, you’ll find the slides from the talk, and if you click on the photos you’ll see the remarks made about them.
Hall couldn’t be in Munich so she prepared the video so you can get a sense of her and how she thinks about making. She is a wonderful character, full of her own unique qualities. This provides a taste of who she is and is helpful for understanding her work.
These books were published through AJF’s Fiscal Sponsorship program. So what’s the program? Individuals and groups can’t accept tax-deductible donations or apply for grants aimed at nonprofits—except through fiscal sponsorship. AJF is a nonprofit, so our program can legally receive and manage the grants and donations you’ve received. You can then use those funds for your art jewelry project. That might be research, curatorial projects, creating new work, educational projects, etc.
(For more information on our fiscal sponsorship program, click here.)
![Toni Greenbaum: Tell us a little about “In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture” and “North by Northwest: The Jewelry of Laurie Hall.”
Susan Cummins: “In Flux” came out during the pandemic and we never got a chance to present it here in Munich, so I am going to try to talk about both books quickly today. Damian Skinner, a New Zealand art historian, and I worked on both books, and Cindi Strauss from the Houston MFA worked with us on “In Flux.”
Toni: Why did you decide to do these books?
Susan: Americans have not been as diligent as [Europeans have been] about recording the history of contemporary jewelry in our part of the world. “In Flux” was an attempt to add to the story of American jewelry by concentrating on a key question: what is American about American jewelry? That led us to politics, and to the 1960s and 1970s, when studio craft was at its height and deeply interwoven with the counterculture. “In Flux” was the result.
Toni: How did you go about researching material?
Susan: We did lots of interviews with those artists who were still alive—and family and friends for those who had died. We looked at contemporary sources, like craft magazines and exhibition catalogs. We read history books, and thought about how the shifts in politics and culture and lifestyle mapped onto the history of craft, and contemporary jewelry. | The cover of the book "In Flux"](https://artjewelryforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2-In-Flux800-x-600.png "Toni Greenbaum: Tell us a little about “In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture” and “North by Northwest: The Jewelry of Laurie Hall.”
Susan Cummins: “In Flux” came out during the pandemic and we never got a chance to present it here in Munich, so I am going to try to talk about both books quickly today. Damian Skinner, a New Zealand art historian, and I worked on both books, and Cindi Strauss from the Houston MFA worked with us on “In Flux.”
Toni: Why did you decide to do these books?
Susan: Americans have not been as diligent as [Europeans have been] about recording the history of contemporary jewelry in our part of the world. “In Flux” was an attempt to add to the story of American jewelry by concentrating on a key question: what is American about American jewelry? That led us to politics, and to the 1960s and 1970s, when studio craft was at its height and deeply interwoven with the counterculture. “In Flux” was the result.
Toni: How did you go about researching material?
Susan: We did lots of interviews with those artists who were still alive—and family and friends for those who had died. We looked at contemporary sources, like craft magazines and exhibition catalogs. We read history books, and thought about how the shifts in politics and culture and lifestyle mapped onto the history of craft, and contemporary jewelry. | The cover of the book \"In Flux\"")
