Interviews

Galerie Pont en Plas is owned and run by Nicole Thienpont and last April the AJF blog featured an interview with Gesine Hackenberg, who was having a show with her at that time. This month, Malvine Marichal’s strange and wonderful work is in the gallery. There was a bit of a language barrier with this interview but I hope I have correctly translated their thoughts.

Susan Cummins: Nicole, what is your background and what led you to start a gallery?

Nicole Thienpont: My first degree was in chemistry at the University of Gent. In my language the degree is called ‘licentiate in chemistry.’ So for me the melting of metals and the experience in laboratories is very familiar. In 2002 I decided to start the gallery Pont & Plas in Gent, Belgium, with an emphasis on contemporary jewelry. My decision to begin the gallery was based on several things. In 1987 I graduated from the Academy of Art in Antwerp with a degree in art jewelry. In 2002 a dream space in Gent became free. It was just below my studio. I had been thinking that we urgently needed more places to exhibit the new jewelry young people were making. So it didn’t take too long to come to the conclusion that I should grab the space.

I understand from your website that you show many different art forms. How does jewelry fit in?

Nicole Thienpont: The emphasis lies on jewelry. There are about 30 people showing contemporary jewelry, national and international. Four times a year there is a special exhibition of glass, ceramics, paintings, drawings, photography and mixed media, designed to interact with the permanent presence of jewelry.

Quirk Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, is showing the work of two wonderfully unique makers named Kim Overstreet and Robin Kranitzky. They have worked together for years and I have always wondered how they got together and how they think about the stories they tell with their jewelry. This show was an opportunity to ask them some questions and find out. Maggie Smith who is the Exhibitions Director at Quirk Gallery also gave us some insight into the beginnings of the gallery.

Susan Cummins: Tell me the story of how Quirk Gallery got started.

Maggie Smith: Katie Ukrop opened Quirk in 2005 in an upcoming section of Richmond’s downtown area. There were a few galleries already located in our neighborhood. The area has continued to grow and recently became recognized as the Richmond’s Arts & Culture District. I joined Katie and the Quirk gang in 2007. Being a Richmond native I have felt very lucky to be a part of the cultural growth that is happening in our city.

Can you describe your space?

Quirk is a unique space in that we have three designated exhibition areas, as well as a shop and Quirk Represents. Quirk Represents is an area reserved specifically for art jewelry. Our exhibition areas are The Shop Wall, The Main Gallery and The Vault. Throughout the year we show jewelry in all three spaces. The Vault is tiny little brick room with a lovely weathered fire door. There are several stories as to what the Vault used to be. My personal favorite is that it stored hops during the building’s brewery days.

Platina in Stockholm, Sweden, is owned and run by Sofia Björkman, who was educated as a jeweler. Her choice of artists includes jewelers from Sweden but also a very select group from other countries. For the past couple of months the gallery has been showing Iris Eichenberg’s exhibition Sense Mapping. Iris is a force on the jewelry scene and a hard one to pin down. Have a look at Gabriel Craig’s interview with her that was published on the AJF website a few months ago and continue reading to find out more about Platina and Eichenberg’s new exhibition.

Susan Cummins: Please tell us the story of how you became a gallery owner in Stockholm.

Sofia Björkman: I took my MFA 1998 as a jewelry maker. At that time there were no galleries in Stockholm that supported graduating students and we knew very little about the international jewelry world. We learned how to make things but not what was waiting for us after graduation. So I had to start up something I believed in and where I felt free. In 1999, one year after graduation, I started up PLATINA together with two friends. Today I run it myself. After the studies we needed income. So we asked some interior designers to make a shop. We sold our jewelry and we asked artists we liked if we could sell their work too. A month later we did our first exhibition. PLATINA became a gallery, a shop and a studio but we did everything under the name PLATINA.

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.