Open to jewelry artists of any age and nationality, the Linda Peshkin Solo Exhibition Award offers $20,000 to support the creation of a solo exhibition to advance an artist working in the field of art jewelry. Geraldine Fenn won the inaugural award, and she will serve as one of three jurors for the next cycle.
Applications are now being accepted for the 2027 Solo Exhibition Award. The proposed project should be about jewelry, loosely defined. The other jurors are Bella Neyman and Jorge Manilla. Deadline: November 15, 2026. More.
AJF: First, a little background. Please explain how you were introduced to contemporary jewelry, and what you are doing now in relation to it.
Geraldine Fenn: I studied jewelry design in Durban in the late 90s after doing a degree in archaeology and classics in Johannesburg, South Africa. It took me a while to get into it, but after a few months I was hooked. It was amazing to me how creative it was, how anything you dreamed up you could turn into a physical thing, especially since I had come from an academic space where we were taught to think about old things, not create new ones.
Even though we did get a fairly technical training, and the course was geared toward the commercial jewelry industry, we were given a solid contemporary foundation, too, learning about pioneers in the field. Seeing work by artists like Lalique and the 70s trailblazers from England and Europe really opened my eyes to what was possible. South Africa at the time when I was a jewelry student—the few years after the end of apartheid, in 1994—was a place brimming with excitement and potential. In all fields of design there was a new energy, a sense that anything could happen. I am still very much making contemporary jewelry, even though most of what I do is more commercial commissioned work, because I see it more as an approach to design and materials rather than a specific style.
This is the second time AJF is presenting this award, thanks to Linda Peshkin’s generosity and love for art jewelry. Having decided to benefit solo exhibitions, we would like to know what do you think is important for a solo show and how it can impact an artist’s career.
Geraldine Fenn: It’s hard to overstate just how big an impact it has! It is an opportunity to sit with an idea and then explore it fully to produce a proper body of work. This is rarely afforded an artist. It obviously is good for your career in terms of exposure and all the subsequent opportunities that flow from that, but the personal artistic growth you gain from going through the process is the most valuable result. It is an enormous gift to give someone, and I am very grateful to Linda and AJF. I hope it is an award that keeps going for a long time and benefits so many more artists.
What do you think is the single most important conversation for artists to be having today?
Geraldine Fenn: Any conversations are good ones because they force you to engage and think about the issue. I’m not sure which is the most important one at the moment. It feels like there’s so much big stuff going on that humanity is at a critical existential juncture. Maybe the role of the artist is itself in question. In a world where so much of the making process, and now the thinking process, too, is being outsourced to machines, maybe the most urgent discussion should be about how we recognize and value authentic artistic expression.
Besides grants such as this one, what other ways do you think that artists can be encouraged and supported?
Geraldine Fenn: Ideally it would be great if art were something that was nurtured in our societies in a way that people would grow up knowing it was something necessary and valuable rather than a luxury. In South Africa the arts are woefully underfunded. They get a fraction of the budget from government that sports do. They are not always offered as subjects at school, so having a career as an artist is mostly not seen as a viable option. More practically speaking, organizations that can offer help with things like selling art and managing businesses would be great, since most artists end up having to be entrepreneurs/bookkeepers/marketers in addition to the thing they’re actually good at.
The opinions stated here do not necessarily express those of AJF.
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