Articles

Behind the Brooch

Portrait of Lorena Angulo Susan Cummins: Did you train as a jeweler? Lorena Angulo: My initial studies were not related to jewelry making at all. I studied mass communications and was looking to work as a journalist when I finished my studies, but destiny brought me to the United States and all my plans changed. […]

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Ana Albuquerque

Portrait of Ana Albuquerque Aaron Decker: Ana Albuquerque is a Portuguese jewelry artist with an expansive view. She has not limited herself to jewelry only but also includes sculpture in her practice. Since 2007 she has been the Vice President of The Association of Portuguese Jewelry (PIN), which is an organization committed to increasing the

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Edinburgh College of Art At the Cominelli Foundation

Two years ago, Italy’s Associazione Gioiello Contemporaneo (AGC) together with Fondazione Raffaele Cominelli organized the first Cominelli Award for contemporary jewelry. The Cominelli Foundation is a private cultural foundation based in a seventeenth century palace in the north of the country.  The palace, Palazzo Cominelli, is in the center of the village of Cisano di San Felice del Benaco and

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Lisa Walker: Powderly

Portrait of Lisa Walker Susan Cummins: You have received recognition through prizes like the 2010 Francoise van den Bosch award and your work has been collected by museums in New Zealand and Europe. You have certainly taken the lead in producing some of the most challenging contemporary jewelry this field has ever seen. What are

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Leatrice S Eagle, JD, ASA, AAA

Eagle Associates, LLC 9309 Inglewood Court Potomac, MD 20854 Email: eaglel@leagleart.com Phone: 301-365-1510 (Office) 240-997-0023 (Cell) 301-365-6798 (Fax) Services offered to art owners include valuation to meet all requirements, planning and advisory services, and collection management. Valuation: • Pre-acquisition and pre-disposition valuations inform buyers of market levels for a specific piece by a particular artist

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Kate Carmel, AAA

350 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019 Phone: 212 245 1136  Email: kmcarmel@aol.com Website: www.katecarmel.com Kate Carmel is a certified member of the Appraisers Association of America and is compliant with all USPAP requirements. When she was chief curator of the American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design) in New York,

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Karen Lorene

Facèré Jewelry Art Gallery 1420 5th Avenue, Suite 108 Seattle, WA 98101 Email: facereart@aol.com Phone: 206-624-6768 Website: www.facerejewelryart.com Karen Lorene, in retail for 40 years, is a member of the International Society of Appraisers and a Senior Member of the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers. For six years she appraised on Antiques Roadshow. She has

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2012 SOFA Speaker

In 2012, Ursula Ilse-Neuman gave a lecture at SOFA NY titled ‘The Transcendent Jewelry of Margaret De Patta: Vision In Motion’. In her lecture, Ilse-Neuman spoke about De Patta’s relationship with modernism and particularly the artistic movement of constructivism. The talk was based on the exhibition Space-Light-Structure: The Jewelry of Margaret De Patta at the Museum of Arts

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Mariko Kusumoto

Mobilia Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, has been exclusively representing Mariko Kusumoto for many years. The gallery is owned and run by the sisters Joanne and Libby Cooper. They represent many major craft artists in a variety of media but jewelry has always had a strong presence. Mariko exists on the edge of jewelry making. In other words she sometimes makes jewelry but she mainly makes magical boxes and sometimes they contain jewelry. Her fertile imagination and unusual background have lead to some wonderful pieces, which we will discuss in this interview.

Mariko Kusumoto Susan Cummins: You have told the story many times that you were raised in Japan in a Buddhist temple and then moved to the United States. How old were you when you moved?

Mariko Kusumoto: I was 23 years old.

Did you study jewelry and metal work here or in Japan? Tell us about your training.

I attended a high school that offered a fine art major, where I learned the basic skills of drawing, sculpture, design and painting. After that I went to Musashino Art College in Tokyo. For the first two years, my major was oil painting and then I transferred to printmaking, focusing on etching. I moved to San Francisco and attended the Academy of Art University, where I pursued printmaking. However right before I graduated, I took a book art class and also beginner and intermediate jewelry and small metal art sculpture classes, which completely changed my direction from two-dimensional work to three-dimensional. I’m not a printmaker anymore but I use etching techniques for much of my work. When I was into printmaking, I was always fascinated by etched metal more than by the printed images on the paper.

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