Articles

As promised here is Kevin Murray’s response to Bruce Metcalf’s article. What do you think about this? Please respond to blogger@artjewelryforum.org

Beyond the occasional comment on a blog site, it’s rare for someone to put the effort into mounting a well-framed argument to express their disagreement. I’m naturally inclined to defend my point of view, but am grateful for the opportunity to continue an argument that will hopefully strengthen both positions.

Bruce Metcalf responded critically to an article I wrote for AJF about ethical jewelry which was recently reposted on this blog.  The kind of ethics I mentioned ranged from the democratic values involved in the critique of preciousness to Ethical Metalsmiths that recruit practice to environmental sustainability.

Ethics is a particularly sensitive subject for jewelry. Jewelry seems to be a medium we set aside from more weighty matters for the enjoyment of frivolity, irony and dazzlement. Expecting moral rectitude from jewelry can appear like throwing a wet blanket on a rare space of innocent play.

Yet we are aware also of monsters lurking in the woods. Jewelry has a profoundly undemocratic history, serving to prop up the aristocratic and military one percent. Stories about ‘blood diamonds’ suggest the trail human and environmental destruction that leads to breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Recently I came across Bruce Metcalf’s response to a text by Kevin Murray that AJF published on its blog a few months ago. Kevin’s text, ‘Aesthetics Versus Ethics: Judgment Day for Contemporary Jewelry,’ was written in preparation for the critical discourse session that AJF convened at the SNAG conference in 2011. We published it, Bruce didn’t like it and wrote about it on his blog. By then, we’d launched the new website and Kevin’s text hadn’t been moved over. So, in honor of what we think could be a useful moment of debate, we bring you Kevin’s text, below, and suggest you check out Bruce’s response, ‘Let History Be The Judge,’ on his blog. We’ve asked Kevin if he has anything else to say, and we’ll be publishing his thoughts on the AJF blog in a few days.

The other day I found Benjamin Lignel’s recent post in Art Jewelry Forum, ‘Just what is it that makes today’s art galleries so different, so appealing?’ It was a teasing title. A quick Google revealed its source as a collage by Richard Hamilton, satirizing 1950s consumerism.  

So what makes the art gallery so appealing for contemporary jewelry? Benjamin was reflecting on the first exhibition of contemporary jewelry at Gargosian Gallery, arguably the most prestigious commercial visual art space on the planet. It was an occasion well worth noting. What followed was a series of salutary disappointments. Rather than select a known figure of the contemporary jewelry scene, Gargosian chose the work of a fashion designer with Dior, Victoria de Castellane.

In response to the opening of the Milwaukee Art Museum show called The Tool at Hand I asked a group of jewelers to talk about their preferred tool. Keith Lewis gave this short and swaggering answer. Try reading it with a cowboy twang. On second thought, perhaps a homoerotic bass tone would work better . . .

The Tool

My favorite tool is a Craftsman brand machinist’s reamer that belonged to my father. As an object it is completely beautiful: tapered, fluted, sharp and poised. It is also singularly specific in its usefulness. It makes holes bigger and is good for nothing else.

I use it all of the time and whenever I pick it up I remember the smell of my father’s shop and the sense of violation I felt selecting tools after he died.

A construction worker who walked like John Wayne and could have been a craftsman, my father made useful things around the house. I have his checkering tool, used for texturing gunstocks. I have a scribe he made from an old dart. And I have his machinist’s reamer.

Keith Lewis is from the wilds of Pennsylvania, where he learned that he liked men a whole lot more than he liked man stuff such as hunting and fishing. He is a jeweler and teaches in the wilds of Washington state, though he craves the city. His favorite fruit is jaboticaba.

Center punch A Tool in the Hand My first instinct was to go with a basic hand tool that has come to feel like home in my hands. Simple, portable, versatile, ancient, I choose a center punch (though in my studio I use this small tool in many ways). It is a key to success

brain Between Head and Belly intestines Ruudt Peters

Grinding Machine Grinding Machine <–break–> Agnes Larsson  

Stone handaxe Tool Stories Truth be told, this idea originated where all the great ones do: in a bar. I have taken a bit of poetic license to protect the identity of those involved in the initial catalyzing conversation. At a pub in South London last spring, the conversation turned to tools.  Three artists and

Sidney Caldwell Deaghlan Susan Cummins: Where are you from and where did you study? Sidney Caldwell Deaghlan : I’m originally from Richmond, Virginia, United States. After travelling around a bit, I returned there to study at the Virginia Commonwealth University, in the Crafts/Materials Studies department. I was particularly drawn to the metals department because of the

A Boy and his Torch The torch begins things and the torch can end things. I like that about it. I like that it channels something as elegant or brutal as fire and relies on my skill to decide which it will be. On a good day I can solder the wings onto a fly

Displays and installations are fascinating to me. Artists and jewelers seem to be trying to find more and more compelling ways to show work and add to its meaning through the use of display strategies. In the past year the installation that I found the most amusing and brilliant was the Marzio Cattelan retrospective at