In 2011, Jeannine Falino gave a lecture at SOFA NY titled “For People Who Are Slightly Mad”: American Modernist Jewelry. In her lecture, Falino talked about her upcoming Museum of Arts and Design exhibition called Crafting Modernism, presenting the work of some of the modernist jewelers whose work is featured in the show. This lecture was sponsored […]
I’ve been trying to understand a trend, not just in art jewelry, but pop culture in general. The sharp, angular shapes of handguns and semi-automatic rifles as graphic black silhouettes or cheeky, bubblegum pink outlines are everywhere. T-shirts, decals, pendants and even cufflinks – guns, apparently, are ‘in.’ Karl Lagerfeld, Gunshoe Now I will be
Since its inception in the mid-twentieth century, art jewelry has been defined by limited hand production in an artistic studio-practice paradigm. However, in the 1980s, advances in computer-aided design and manufacturing technologies led to the expansion of this definition, rendering the studio and hand manufacturing useful characterizations rather than steadfast criteria for defining art jewelry.
When artists hear the word ‘marketing’ our toes tend to curl up. Savvy self-promoters are usually castigated within the creative community as sellouts, cynics and punchlines. Within the rarefied air of the ‘fine art’ world there’s big money to be had, but for the niche world of art jewelry it’s more like sink or swim.
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The Dragon Is Dead In olden times, we believed in supernatural forces. A stray look from a stranger would be enough to induce a panic that we had fallen victim to the evil eye. These phenomena had no rational explanation, so could not be controlled by normal means. Instead, they required the intervention of magical
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In 2010, Cindi Strauss gave a lecture at the SNAG conference in Houston titled ‘At the Crossroads of Trends and Traditions: Emerging American Jewelry Artists Today.’ In her lecture, Strauss presented a series of findings about the state of contemporary jewelry practice in the United States, as well as the relationship that these makers have
In 2010, Rock Hushka gave a lecture at SOFA NY titled ‘Holding Objects: The Psychoanalytic Mechanisms of Wearing Jewelry.’ In his lecture, Hushka explained that he came to the subject of art jewelry seeking to understand the relationship between the artist and the wearer. He began by exploring the idea that jewelry appeals to many
This essay was first delivered as a talk at SOFA Chicago in November 2010. Watching, Looking, Learning ‘And viewers like you.’ The title of this talk was stolen from the PBS sign-off to most of their programs. They thank various corporations, foundations and individuals and then they thank ‘viewers like you.’ They are expressing gratitude
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This essay was first delivered on a panel ‘Touch in Contemporary Art’ at the College Art Association, Los Angeles, in 2009, through travel funds provided by the Society of North American Goldsmiths. The paper was further developed into a lecture and presented at SOFA Chicago in November 2009 and subsequently presented at University of El
Curatorial Conundrums: Exhibiting Contemporary Art Jewelry in a Museum Read More »
Darren Waterston, Hpertrophy (crustacea), 2010, crabs, paint, courtesy of the artist and the Inman Gallery, Houston Hermann Jünger, Necklace, 1957, gold 1000/750, rubies, sapphires, moonstone, culture pearls, enamel, emeralds, exhibited at the Brussels World’s Fair 1958, donation of the artist to Die Neue Sammlung – The International Design Museum Munich, courtesy of Die Neue Sammlung
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This essay was first delivered as a talk at the Going to Extremes SNAG conference in 2010 in Houston, Texas, on March 13, 2010. Aliyah Gold Amelia Toelke While thinking about these questions, I happened to mention them to gallerist Sienna Patti and we fell into a meaningful conversation about how one defines an emerging
At the Crossroads of Trends and Traditions: Emerging American Jewelry Artists Today Read More »
This essay was developed from the lecture ‘Holding Objects: What It Means to Wear Jewelry: The Psychoanalytic Mechanisms,’ presented at the Facets of Meaning symposium at Tacoma Art Museum, June 28, 2009. A version of the talk was also presented at SOFA NY in June 2010. Marcia Macdonald, If You Sit Still … You Can
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