Interviews

Envision a four-storey high jewelry gallery. It seems mythological and is hard to imagine but Galerie Marzee is proof that it can exist. The owner, Marie-Jose van den Hout, has an ambitious vision for her gallery. It was founded in 1978, moved into the current building in 1995 and since then has specialized in presenting contemporary jewelry at the highest levels. While sipping on her beloved Illy espresso she answered some questions for the AJF blog. She often runs several solo shows at once and in July I picked out the artist Antje Bräuer from Germany to interview. Her work was especially mysterious.

Susan Cummins: Marie- Jose, what led you to create a four-storey high jewelry gallery in a smallish town in the middle of the Netherlands?

Marie Jose Van Den Hout: Well, I started my gallery in Nijmegen. This is my second move and my third building. The Town Council of Nijmegen wanted to create a cultural destination for this building and asked me if I was interested. I would never be able to get a building like this anywhere else in Holland. Actually, the original intent for the building was for it to be demolished and sold to Holiday Inn to build a hotel, but the Town Council decided otherwise. When I bought the space it was a mere skeleton. Bert Dirrix, the architect I hired to shape the gallery, designed some museums. We chose simple materials – concrete, glass and steel – and kept the original walls. Traces of its former life as a grain warehouse still remain in the building today. Above all, I wanted to give the jewelry room to breathe, in the same way that any fine art gallery would display their works of art. With Marzee, my original intention was to display jewelry alongside the different disciplines of art and design. But I found that people tend to take you more seriously if you specialize. Now that I have made a name for myself, I collaborate with the largest fine arts gallery in Holland, Nouvelles Images. We exchange exhibitions – I receive work from, say, a sculptor and they receive work by a jeweler – so that in the end I am able to achieve the diversity I always aspired to represent.

Gallery Funaki in Melbourne, Australia has a surprisingly international reputation and one look at their roster of artists shows a strong sprinkling of the great European jewelers amongst the best Australia and New Zealand have to offer. Gallery Funaki under the direction of Katie Scott recently joined AJF and we are happy to welcome them as a supporter and to give some insight into both the gallery’s history and the background of one of their local artists, Blanche Tilden.

Susan Cummins: For those that haven’t visited you in Melbourne, could you please give us a history of the gallery and its physical location and qualities?

Katie Scott: Mari Funaki opened Gallery Funaki in 1995. She had recently graduated from the gold and silversmithing program at RMIT and wanted to establish a space that would show what she considered the best of international contemporary jewelry – pieces that hadn’t had an audience in Australia before – and show it in a way that really did the work justice. She also wanted to promote Australian jewelry in this context, placing it beside and showing its equality with the international movement. The gallery is located in a small laneway in central Melbourne, an area known for its culture and history. It is a small, narrow space fitted out very simply with two long shelves as the exhibition space and a series of drawers in which pieces are kept. Mari felt it was important that the jewelry shouldn’t be behind glass but accessible to the hand and eye. People can really examine and interact with jewelry here in a way they can’t do anywhere else.

Gallery Lulo is located in the lovely small Northern California town of Healdsburg. Karen Gilbert and Anne-Katherine Schjerbeck (Katrina) own and run the gallery, which is just off the main square. They are featuring an artist who we have heard about before, named Meghan Patrice Riley. She won the Rafael Prize at the Society for Contemporary Craft earlier this year and you can read our post about it. Her show at Lulo is titled L’Age D’Or and features her signature fine wire creations. I caught up with co-owner Karen right after her return from Croatia.

Susan Cummins: Karen, can you tell us the story of how you became a jeweler and then a gallery owner? What is your training?

Karen Gilbert: I started as a painting major in school at The California College of the Arts, but while taking a metal class as an elective I fell in love with working with my hands in metal. It was very natural act that felt so comfortable. I was also educated in glass and glass blowing and that has woven itself into my career as well. After school, I had worked as a jewelry designer/artist for years and then it became necessary to make a living at it. At that point, I went from an artistically free period to the necessity of making a living.

Fingers Contemporary Jewellery gallery in Auckland, New Zealand, was established in 1973 by a group of young jewelers. It is where the contemporary jewelry scene took shape in that country and the gallery continues to thrive today. Fingers recently joined AJF and we’ve featured the gallery this month in our newsletter, which is a members only feature, but we also wanted to make you aware of Fingers and the artist they are showing right now. I interviewed Alan Preston who was one of the originators of the gallery and Matthew McIntyre-Wilson who is the featured artist this month with a show called Nga Mahanga: The Twins.

Susan Cummins: Is Fingers still a cooperative? How does it work?

Alan Preston: It was always five or six separate businesses operating collectively. One of these is Fingers. We still have five members selling their work through Fingers and we sell around 60+ makers on commission. We employ five people who do the bulk of the work selling and coordinating shows.

What is your role?

Alan Preston: My role is that of a senior partner advising on the phone where necessary and doing the internet banking. Today it was buying the wine for the opening for Matthew McIntyre-Wilson and bidding farewell to Octavia Cook, another jeweler, on Monday.

Patina Gallery, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a lively and active place. Ivan and Allison Barnett, the owners, are constantly working on how to present their shows in an inspiring environment where their clients can learn about the handmade work they show. This month they are presenting the work of Myung Urso, a Korean artist who has developed a way of working with wire and fabric to make very unique jewelry. After talking to them, I was really impressed with the commitment and creativity they all bring to their chosen lifestyle. See what you think.

Susan Cummins: Ivan and Allison, you are partners in the gallery. Correct? Can you give me some idea about your backgrounds? How did you get into this business?

Last September AJF published a profile on The National in Christchurch, New Zealand, in our newsletter.  I won’t say too much, since you can read the excellent interview, except that the 2011 earthquake in New Zealand destroyed the gallery. Caroline Billing who owns and runs The National has recovered and is still going. She is remarkable and I wanted to see how she was doing. During June she featured New Work: Renee Bevan, who has some very complex and thoughtful things to say about her jewelry. See what you think.

April Higashi is a jeweler who opened a lovely intimate gallery called Shibumi in Berkeley, California, a number of years ago. I know her to be industrious and thoughtful, which is reflected in the work she does as well in how she has structured her life and her gallery. She is lots of fun, a woman of many talents and has a good time making things work in her life. At the moment she is having a show called Geologica by Brigid O’Hanrahan, who works in both porcelain and metal and often combines the two in her jewelry. Her sensitive rings and brooches give you a hint of her shy nature.

Susan Cummins: I know we have worked together in the past, but please refresh my memory about how you got to be the owner of a jewelry gallery.

April Higashi: I’ve been making jewelry for twenty years. Even in the beginning when I was first starting to make jewelry, I always thought about how it would be shown, grouped together or how it could be worn. When I worked at your gallery (Susan Cummins Gallery, Mill Valley, California) you instilled in me the importance of thought, idea and craftsmanship in each piece. While there, I realized how much I enjoyed aesthetically arranging and grouping the work. I also realized during that time how much I liked working directly with clients. So I knew I would enjoy curating a gallery. When my husband and I were looking to buy a house we found a building that was zoned for partial commercial use. The space was large enough to have both a workshop/studio and a gallery on the bottom floor. With this set up I felt I could continue to be a jewelry maker as well as take on a new role as curator and gallery owner. Originally I was thinking I would only do the gallery part-time. The reality, however, is that I have ended up creating two full-time jobs for myself. Fortunately I am a good delegator and so I have also ‘curated’ an amazing creative team to help me.

Amsterdam must have more jewelry galleries per capita than any other place on earth and some of them, like Galerie Louise Smit,  have been around for more than 25 years. This gallery helped to create an audience for contemporary jewelry both locally and internationally. Luckily for us, Monika Zampa has kept the gallery alive as Louise Smit retired. Best wishes to Louise and Robert Smit and may you enjoy the less frantic pace of your retired lives. In the meantime I wanted to know more about what Monika was planning.

Susan Cummins: You are a fairly new owner of a very old gallery. Can you tell us about how the transition took place between you and Louise Smit?

Monika Zampa: In the past I used to work in London as an investment banker, project manager and a deputy director for medium size company. Then I moved to Amsterdam, changed my life and started to study conceptual jewelry at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. In my last years of the studies, I realized that my combination of financial/organizational skills and passion for conceptual jewelry was rather unique. I thought that it could be perfectly applied in running the gallery. I approached Louise and offered my skills and knowledge if she would consider having a business partner. We started to talk, got to know each other and had lots of good times. Our cooperation began in September 2010 with the idea that I would be able to run the gallery on my own by 2011.

AJF is searching the world for galleries, museums, curators, makers and collectors who are passionate or even just interested in art jewelry and want to join our community. In the process we found Putti Art Gallery in Riga, Latvia and asked the owner Agita Putane to answer a few questions about her gallery and her current show with artist Maris Sustins, a Latvian jeweler. Welcome Putti!

Susan Cummins: Congratulations on being AJF’s first Latvian gallery.

Agita Putane: I am excited and happy about it. This is the best birthday present for our gallery. I would like to thank you for this fantastic opportunity. This is a great chance to tell the world that Latvian jewelry designers are highly professional artists and that Riga is home to a fantastic art gallery, PUTTI.

First of all I have to ask why your gallery is called Putti? I know that in renaissance art the ‘putti’ is a little pudgy winged baby. How does that image work for you?

This story dates back to the times when the gallery was located in another place in Old Riga. Its brick wall had been preserved since the seventeenth century. During that period, baroque dominated in art and in architecture. The figure of the angel was used in paintings and in arches. The figure of angel – ‘putto’ – in Italian means ‘a guardian angel.’ ‘PUTTI’ in Italian means ‘guardian angels’ (plural). They are protecting us and we feel it all the time. For our logo we used a font from the baroque period.

Sienna Gallery located in Lenox, Massachusetts, is owned and run by Sienna Patti, a youngish and ambitious dealer. She grew up in a family atmosphere filled with the ethos of the American craft community and started her business while still in her teens. Sienna is a member of the AJF board and an active member of the international jewelry community. She featured Lola Brooks that the SOFA New York 2012 fair. The show, called charted territories, was installed using furniture and objects taken directly from Lola’s personal holdings. The display added a lot of information about the pieces and about Lola herself, who kindly agreed to answer my questions.

Susan Cummins: Where did you study? Did you have a mentor there?

Lola Brooks: I studied with Myra MImlitsch-Gray and James Bennett at SUNY New Paltz, where I got my BFA. It was inspiring to work with two professors who were as engaged in their pedagogical pursuits as they were in their careers as prolific artists. They were both incredibly influential in shaping me into the artist I am today, sometimes similarly and sometimes in very different ways. I was so fortunate to get to work with James as his assistant for a number of years, cutting my teeth on his gold and learning the finer points of composition among a million other things. We had an incredible working relationship. His material irreverence left its fingerprints all over me and my work, manifesting itself in my flagrant disregard for – and obsession with – conventional notions of preciousness and craftsmanship.

Atty Tantivit opened ATTA Gallery in Bangkok a year and a half ago. After acquiring an MA degree in Marine Biology, Atty took one of those detours to jewelry that led her to Europe and eventually to opening her gallery. She says, ‘I wanted to open a gallery in Thailand as I would like to share with other people the kind of jewelry that I fell in love with. If I can fall in love with it, I am sure there will be other people who will as well and I just have to give them opportunity to see more of it. Also I had some artist friends in Thailand who had no platform to showcase their works. Having a gallery opened the  door for them as well. We have some well-known artists who made it big abroad but are nobody at home. I think this needs to change.’ So how is she doing? ‘I like to think that the first year was the time that ATTA Gallery learned how to crawl and how to stand up. Now we are walking slowly but steadily. I hope that next year we will be running!’ During the month of May 2012, Atta Gallery is showing the work of Austrian artist Bernhard Stimpfl-Abele.  He has a unique way of working as he explains in this interview.

Susan Cummins: What is your background? Where are you from? Where did you attend school? Where do you live now?

Bernhard Stimpfl-Abele: I am a goldsmith and jewelry artist with a master’s degree from the Konstfack University in Stockholm, Sweden. I live between Italy and Sweden and I was born in Austria.