Interviews

Galerie Ra in Amsterdam was an early champion of contemporary jewelry. It was established in 1976 by Paul Derrez, a jeweler and legendary visionary. Paul continues to run his gallery and this month we catch an exhibition there of the work of Johanna Dahm. She is doing the same rings as she has for a long time but with Enhancements, which is the title of the show.

Susan Cummins: You have probably answered this question many times, so I have to request your patience, but you are known for making rings using a casting technique acquired from the African Ashanti and Indian Dokra. Can you please talk about that process?

Johanna Dahm: Compared to other lost-wax casting methods around the world, theirs is unique and genius. Both cultures, living so far apart, not even aware of each other, share a process aptly described as casting in a closed cycle. Yes, the wax model is lost after it has been encased in clay and melted out, yet is still there in its negative. This shell is joined with a layer of clay to the crucible containing the metal, looking like a Babushka. An old oil barrel serves as a furnace, like those of the Ashanti. I love the 1100-degree heat and the smell of glowing bright yellow coal. With long tongs the glowing forms are pulled out of the furnace and merely flipped upside down for casting. This is the closed cycle technique, everything mysteriously hidden to the eye, no separate melting and pouring of the metal. The most exciting part is cracking open the form. Has the piece been cast successfully, or is everything lost? This closed cycle process has great advantage, but as usual only if mastered. Lost and Found: The Ashanti Trail to Rings was thus the title of my first book.

Karl Fritsch, the prolific, original jeweler is having a show at Galerie Rosemarie Jaeger in Hochheim, a little town outside of Frankfurt, Germany. It is a beautiful space as you will see in the installation shots and contrasts beautifully with Karl’s ‘misshapen’ jewelry.

Susan Cummins: Gerd Rothmann wrote about the bowl you created for this show by saying: ‘Out of this bar of gold Karl Fritsch has wrought, using a heavy hammer in a somewhat disrespectful (if not brutal, or in any case quite unsubtle) way, a somewhat misshapen looking bowl. It would seem that he went about doing this with the express desire to shatter any professional notion of aesthetics: the manner in which he mistreated the precious and venerated material was admirably cheeky.’ Your approach is disquieting. Why do you work this way?

Karl Fritsch: If I answer that question I can tell you the story of my life, or I can say I don’t know. I think the text from Gerd gives a answer and it is my ultimate pleasure and reason to make work like that, if somebody can engage with it in the way Gerd does. No bullshit! The bit of text you quote is taken from a longer text. It might help to read the whole text as it gives some ideas about answers.

‘(First you have to imagine one kilogram of pure 24 carat gold: its weight; its golden yellow lustre; its softness. Merchants used to bite on gold coins, testing if the gold was genuine on the basis of the indentation made by their teeth.

Klimt02 is most famous in the jewelry community as a website where the full breath of the field is displayed. It is a fabulous resource, but it is also a gallery in Barcelona, Spain, started by Leo Caballero and Amador Bertomeu. This month they are featuring an exhibition by the indomitable New Zealand jeweler 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 you thinking?

Lisa Walker: Thank you! I’ll cut and paste that for my next book, like a show off. There’s often a fine line between showing off and informing people about what you do, (like Facebook, etc) or total overkill. It’s almost an uncomfortable experience to post and post and email and email about yourself, sort of hand over eyes and click. Anyway I haven’t really answered you. What am I thinking? In a sentence, I’m thinking about jewelry, about art, about materials, about ideas, about no ideas, about how far I can go that it still makes sense, about resonance, about love, about life, culture, about myself, about the world, politics, about that innate humanness and wonder in brilliant work, about what is good – and that will do for now.

Vander A Contemporary Art Jewellery in Brussels, Belgium, owned by Françoise Vanderauwera, is doing some very interesting things to bring jewelry into the contemporary art scene there. This wonderfully quirky show by Anja Eichler currently on view at the gallery became an occasion for the gallery to plan a project based on the jewelry, which resulted in a video.

Susan Cummins: Your new show at Vander A Gallery is called Urbanauts. What does that word mean?

Anja Eichler: Urbanaut (pl. Urbanauts) is an invented word. Its roots come from Latin ‘urbanus’ = urbanized, courteous, witty and from Greek: ‘nautés’ = sailors. An Urbanaut cruises the cities as a sailor does the seas. I am an Urbanaut. I sail through the life of Shanghai. I navigate in a culture that is not mine, among people who are foreign to me and who do not speak my language. The pieces that I made last year in Shanghai reflect my impressions and experiences in the city. Hence, I called this series ‘Urbanauts.’

I understand that you are German but now live in Shanghai. Why are you there?

Originally I lived in Berlin and I moved to Shanghai a year ago. My husband wanted to live abroad for some time after having been in Berlin for ten years. So we were looking for a place where we could both pursue our careers. That place was Shanghai. Funnily, there is also another part of that story. My husband and I were in Shanghai seven years ago and at that time I was already fascinated by the city. And I said to my husband, ‘I could very well envision living here for two years.’ Back then, it was just said in a rush of emotions as a tourist being fascinated by ‘exotic’ and foreign surroundings. But it became real. 

I have already lived in foreign countries: in the United States, in Italy and for a few months in France. I am very curious about foreign cultures and environments and love to explore them. Of course, traveling is also a possibility for getting new impressions. However, I think that one is much more forced to reflect on oneself and to challenge traditional perspectives when living in another country and experiencing the daily life.

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.

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.

Mariko Kusumoto: 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.