While trying to make the best i-photograph possible to illustrate this essay with Susan Sontag’s On Photography, my “summer read,” I was confronted with some questions: Did I “construct” or “disclose,” as Susan Sontag puts forward in her book? Was I trying to establish a relation between “the self and the world,” was the photograph […]
This Summer I’m Going to Re-read… Read More »
Hi, my name is Vinny, and I am Margaret Hilda Thatcher’s pearl necklace. I hear you! Sounds like a bleedin’ self-help support group. Well, maybe it should be, my old cocker. It all started back in August ’53, the year of our Regina’s coronation. There I am, in Asprey, minding my own business, dreaming about
After the publication of this book, Berger described that he “has never written a book with a greater sense of urgency.” This comment resonates with me to this day, as I have never read a book with a comparable level of urgency. Before starting the book itself, I was particularly drawn to its striking cover
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My Mum gave me Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual for Christmas 2011. Since then, the big wedge of paper has undergone material transformation, something Perec pays particular attention to within the book’s numerous and nebulous narratives. Tiny bits of torn paper bookmark pages that I have to return to; the thinly glued spine is
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I’m happy to send you a picture of my work space, the room where I create and design my “quasi caramelle” line of jewelry. This is a very comfortable and tiny room with a table, two chairs, some books, and many varieties of paper, which is the main material I use. Together with this there
Mariolina, Asti, Italy Read More »
In the mid-90s, to use the word “curating” in the field of contemporary jewelry must have sounded exaggerated or simply incomprehensible. To think with and through the format of an exhibition in order to transform it into a discursive medium was quite unusual, especially if the statement was coming from an independent curator, who was
This Summer I Am Reading… Read More »
“What Makes a Woman?”—Elinor Burkett’s op-ed for The New York Times—triggered a saucy catfight between second-wave and third-wave feminists (and who doesn’t love a little girl-on-girl action, am I right?). Burkett makes what she seems to think is a compelling argument that being transgender is just another way for those assigned male at birth to
I am currently writing a longish essay on new media, and two of the three themes of this year’s SNAG program[1]—“Social impact” and “innovation”—held a special appeal for me: There, in the same room, in the course of a mere three days, my education regarding crafters’ involvement with new media would be done. Yee-ha! I
WTF is M.I.T. Doing at SNAG? Read More »
Reading is seasonal. Come June, we head down the nearest Amazon shop—well, you know what I mean—to buy what your downstairs neighbor calls a “summer read” while wrapping a bashful smile around the latest Le Carré, which happens to be poking out of his beach tote. Meanwhile AJF, being of the WTF persuasion, believes that
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This is my design bench in my studio. It’s separate from the workbenches where the jewelry is made so that I have plenty of room to spread out stones, sketches, and tools. There is a scale and a calculator for weighing and pricing, pencils and paper, and a much-needed big pink eraser. The sectioned trays of
Sydney Lynch, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA Read More »
Andreas Richter’s box for Dorothea Prühl’s Stern (Star), photo: courtesy Galerie Marzee Dorothea Prühl, Stern (Star), 1999, necklace, cherry wood, 60 mm tall, in Andreas Richter’s box, photo: courtesy Galerie Marzee
Dorothea Prühl’s Boxes Read More »
The poppy-as-emblem emerged simultaneously in North American, Australasian, and European cultures as a symbol of loss of life after two world wars. Nearly 100 years after it first appeared as a token of mourning, why has a small red poppy become so central to remembering countless global conflicts, for legions of men, women, and children
