Diane Azzam Diane Azzam: I left the Middle East twice. The first time, in 1967, I followed my parents, who had decided to leave. It was just after the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states. We were living in Lebanon and the political situation was beginning to get tense. So my father, who […]
Hide a Face, Hide a Sex: Jewelry at the Edge of Resistance Read More »
The gallery Four in Gothenburg, Sweden, has just joined the AJF community of supporters. Its owners—Karin Roy Andersson, Malin Lövgren, Linnéa Eriksson, and Hanna Liljenberg—hosted the AJF trip to Gothenburg last year. We thank them for that, and for joining us in presenting original material on our website. Jorge Manilla, Extreme Seductiveness, 2014, necklace, leather,
Jorge Manilla: Oscure Sacrifices Read More »
Peter Bauhuis is an original. His new show at Gallery S O is named after a mushroom called Armillaria, which creates a large underground network from which the mushrooms sprout. Peter’s jewelry looks like it’s related to the mushroom and in his telling is connected to a network of ideas. You can feel his love
Peter Bauhuis: Armillaria Read More »
Aimee Petkus’s collection of jewelry was briefly on display during a trunk show at the Heidi Lowe Gallery on December 13, 2014. In this interview, Aimee discusses her background in geology and the influence it has on her work. Missy Graff: How did you become interested in making jewelry? Please tell me about your background.
Rebecca Myers has been designing and fabricating custom jewelry for more than 20 years. Drawn to the sculptural, engineering, and problem-solving aspects of making, she is inspired by nature and its curiosities: her garden, the allure of the natural world, and the dichotomy that is captured in nature—the rough and the smooth, the dark and the light. Her designs are delicate and feminine, but with an edgy and organic quality. Rebecca is the featured artist for December at Gravers Lane Gallery in Philadelphia; on the eve of that exhibition, Bonnie Levine spent some time chatting with Rebecca about her work, inspirations, success, and longevity in the jewelry world.
Bonnie Levine: How did you get started as a jeweler, and when did you realize you were hooked?
Rebecca Myers: I had to fulfill a craft requirement when I was a sophomore at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. While I was actually making something, the other kids in my class were melting things and setting their clothing on fire. I realized that I was actually pretty good at it. It initially was the path of least resistance. I then got hooked on figuring out how to design things that were desirable and wearable. Once I started down the path of putting an actual line together, the process got really exciting for me. I sold the small line I made my senior year to a gallery in New Hope, Pennsylvania. That $500 may as well have been $5,000. I was elated!
The hardest thing about building a successful jewelry line wasn’t acquiring or applying the skills, but figuring out how to make something that got people excited enough that they wanted to buy it, while still fulfilling my own aesthetic requirements. I wasn’t drawn to commercial jewelry, but was partially trained in that world. I worked for a jeweler in Milwaukee for five years or so. The skills I acquired working in that world have been a key to making the kind of work that appeals to the public. My work is the result of those skills, accompanied with an interest in fine art, fashion, and an art school education.
The show of work by Andrea Wagner at Platina gave me an opportunity to catch up with the artist. I first met her in Amsterdam when she and several other jewelers were working together in a loft studio. At the time, the idea of the garden and its relationship to architecture was of interest to them. I remember realizing that people in the small country of the Netherlands need to think about land and building in a very deliberate way. There simply isn’t room to take it for granted.
Susan Cummins: Are you still thinking of this Jardin Intérieur in the same way now as you did then, or have your ideas developed? How?
Andrea Wagner: The first time we met, I was in a rough period following a couple of life upheavals. My prolonged living circumstances in what was originally intended as a temporary solution turned my craving for privacy and my own space into a real obsession that started infecting my work. A micro series from that time was even called Arcadian Flights! Another small body of work leaned on the idea of floral friezes on buildings, with the resulting pieces looking like flowers turned into shelters.
Andrea Wagner: … And the Architect Is Still Facing His Jardin Intérieur Read More »
Sydney Lynch is a hard-working, self-supporting jeweler. In this interview she describes how she makes a living by creating jewelry, and what inspires her. Her show at Aaron Faber Gallery in New York City includes a huge selection of her work. Read about how she does it.
Susan Cummins: This show at Aaron Faber gallery includes 125 pieces. Is it a kind of retrospective? Are you showing sketches and photographs along with the jewelry? Can you describe the installation?
Sydney Lynch: The Aaron Faber show is more of a cross-section of my current work, rather than a retrospective. I have always created both a production line and one-of-a-kind designs, so there is a range from both bodies of work. The shell and coral pieces, which I made for the Aaron Faber 40th Anniversary show, are also on display. That small series was an opportunity for me to have fun designing and making pieces that were personal to me, incorporating finds from beachcombing in Mexico.
You mention on your website that while you were in college you worked on a Navajo reservation and that it was there you were inspired to make your own jewelry. Can you tell us this story?
Sydney Lynch: When I was 19, a sophomore in college, I spent six weeks as a teacher’s aide on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. It was a transformative experience on all levels. I grew up in Connecticut, and had never experienced the Western landscape. The powerful geography of the open desert, rocks, and canyons was thrilling, and I decided then and there to move out west, and have never lived on the East Coast again. It was also an opportunity for learning about native culture.
Sydney Lynch: Interpreting Her World Read More »
Instinct is an apt title for Eric Silva’s show at Gallery Lulo. As a self-educated artist, Eric uses his natural impulses to work with interesting materials to make his jewelry. The results are varied and original. There isn’t too much material written about him, so I was very grateful that he was interested in answering a few questions.
Susan Cummins: The name Silva has Portuguese origins. Is that your background? Can you describe where you grew up and a little about your family history?
Eric Silva: No, I am Mexican. I am third generation born in California. I grew up in Norwalk, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. I was raised by a single mother and I have one younger brother. I came from a family of carpenters.
When did you know you wanted to be a jeweler?
Eric Silva: Being a jeweler isnʼt something that I planned to be or do. What I was most interested in was carving small objects. Because of the scale that I enjoyed working in, it seemed most appropriate to turn them into wearable items.
Eric Silva: Instinct Read More »
Susan and Jeff Wise collaborate not only as man and wife, but to make jewelry together. The couple is known for cutting their own sculptural gemstones and integrating them into bold designs—their work has been collected by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Art and Design in New York. On the occasion of their show, An Exhibition of Modern Jewelry, at Patina Gallery, I had the chance to ask them a few questions.
Olivia Shih: This is your first gallery exhibition in two years. Did you take a hiatus from gallery exhibitions, or does it take this long to prepare for a show? Why exhibit now?
Susan and Jeff Wise: We show in galleries on a regular basis, but this is an unusually large collection for us, and it’s especially exciting to have it featured in a gallery as beautifully curated as Patina. We have a very long history with Santa Fe—in Jeff’s case, going back to his teens in the 60s, when the family would take road trips from their home in Denver in a 1948 Chrysler Town & Country Woodie. In those days, there were lots of highly skilled Navajo and Pueblo silversmiths selling their work under the portico of the governor’s palace, where Jeff bought turquoise heishi beads.
We currently are able to produce around 60 pieces a year, and we’ll have around 80 pieces at Patina, so this show represents a significant amount of bench time. Many of the pieces had been put aside as our own retrospective collection, and we don’t normally show them or offer them for sale—but together, Allison and Ivan (Patina’s owners) can be most persuasive. Anything for art. The idea for this show started when Allison came up to Durango and stayed with us while she judged awards for a show at the Durango Art Center, which Susan and I had done the initial jurying for.
Susan and Jeff Wise: An Exhibition of Modern Jewelry Read More »
Benedikt Fischer is an Austrian jeweler who attended the technical School for Arts and Craft in Steyr, Austria, before taking a leap into art jewelry at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, where he studied under Manon van Kouswijk and Suska Mackert. After Rietveld, he worked as a professor’s assistant at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle, Germany. Fischer is known for his idiosyncratic pairing of traditional metal engraving with brightly colored plastic in highly original forms. His work is currently on exhibit at Jewelers’Werk. He is also one of five finalists for the 2014 Art Jewelry Forum Artist Award.
Olivia Shih: Could you talk about your time at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie? How has it influenced the way you think or work?
Benedikt Fischer: Before I came to study at the Rietveld, I only had a technical background, so I was not really familiar with the concept of so-called art jewelry. I felt comfortable there from the very first day, although it was of course not always easy, especially in the beginning. I think I came at the right time—there were really inspiring people, and the teachers, Manon van Kouswijk and Suska Mackert, were wonderful. They put a lot of thought into the program and showed us their love for the field and interesting ways of working. In short, it was perfect. The Rietveld is a powerhouse for ideas and creativity.
Bettina Speckner is a German jewelry artist who studied under Otto Künzli and Hermann Jünger at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. She has exhibited her work in major galleries, and now hers is the first jewelry show at the Galeria Thomas Cohn in Brazil. This gallery, up until now, has been exclusively an art gallery, but has made the bold move to become devoted to a new art form (for him)—contemporary jewelry. Bettina is known for creating fresh yet nostalgic narratives by altering ferrotypes, some dating back to the Industrial Revolution, with a surgeon’s touch and jeweler’s eye.
Olivia Shih: This is the first jewelry show by the Thomás Cohn Gallery in São Paulo, Brazil. How did you connect with him in the first place?
Bettina Speckner: Thomas contacted me via email. When he told me that he had the idea to start a gallery of contemporary jewelry in Sao Paulo, I was of course interested and also fascinated by his brave idea. I was in Brazil 25 years ago for six months, and I had my very first solo exhibition there.
You were studying painting before you transferred to the jewelry department and studied under Otto Künzli and Hermann Jünger. How has this background influenced your work?
Bettina Speckner: I think it still does. My way of seeing is maybe with a painter’s eye—my jewelry pieces rarely are three-dimensional, and everything happens on a two-dimensional surface. Maybe even my use of imagery comes from there. It gives me the possibility to play.
Bettina Speckner: Foto-jóias Read More »
It is difficult to overstate the influence of Dorothea Prühl on the field of contemporary jewelry or simply to trace its bounds. She taught many, inspired more, and enthuses seemingly everyone. It helps that her colliers straddle the fence between the figurative and the abstract. She is that bit of unmarked territory on your jewelry
In Conversation with Dorothea Prühl Read More »
