Artist

Svenja John: Assembly

Interviews /

Svenja JohnSvenja John’s exhibition Assembly is on display at Gallery Funaki this month. In this interview, Svenja provides us with insight about the complexity of her process and describes her philosophy on the use of modern technology by makers.

Missy Graff: How did you become a jeweler? Please tell me about your background.

Svenja John: I met a young goldsmith when I was on vacation on the Adriatic coast at the age of 14. I was fascinated by her natural glow and happiness. Her words were so passionate when she talked about her job that I decided, “This is exactly what I want to do!” It was neither a specific piece of jewelry, nor the concept of jewelry, that sparked my interest. It all started because of one person’s passion for making.

When I turned 16, I tried very hard to find an apprenticeship—against the will of my parents. At that time, it was an almost impossible desire. Without connections, none of my generation could reach this goal, simply due to the fact that there were too many people trying to enter the field.

I had to wait until 1985 to start my training as a jeweler and to become a student at the Staatliche Zeichenakademie in Hanau, Germany.

 

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Craig McIntosh: Machined

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Craig McIntoshNew Zealand jeweler Craig McIntosh is breaking all the stone-carving rules by turning the method around from a reductive process to an additive one. He works in a land where stone carving is a strong tradition, so this could be upsetting. His new show at The National in Christchurch gives us an idea of what this means.

Susan Cummins: You are a carver of stone and a maker of small objects and jewelry, similar to the Japanese craftsman who makes netsuke. What is your connection to that, and how did you get here?

Craig McIntosh: I was introduced to netsuke in the late 90s. I produced and exhibited a small amount of netsuke alongside making jewelry ’til about 2004. If you’re interested in carving, there is so much that can be learned from looking into netsuke—in fact, I don’t think I would make the jewelry I make now, or understand as much about working on a small scale, if I hadn’t explored netsuke.

But it became problematic. The more I became involved with making jewelry, and considering jewelry and its relationship to identity—particularly here in Aotearoa, New Zealand—the less appropriate it felt to be making something from somebody else’s culture. So I stopped, and have been focusing on making jewelry since. I think it has been one of the most rewarding decisions I have ever made.

 

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Frieda Doerfer: Lines

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Frieda DoerferFrieda Doerfer’s exhibition Lines was recently on display at Galerie Ra. In this interview, Frieda provides us with insight about her use of line and shares the concepts behind her pieces. 

Missy Graff: Please tell me about your background. How did you become interested in making jewelry? 

Frieda Doerfer: After I finished school, I thought that goldsmithing might be an interesting craft to learn. I managed to get an internship and I knew right away that I had found the right job. So I moved to Pforzheim, in the south of Germany, to pursue my apprenticeship as a goldsmith at the Goldschmiedeschule. After that, I studied jewelry design at Pforzheim University. I graduated in 2013 and since then I have been a self-employed jewelry maker and artist. 

During your many years of training you discovered guilloché, an engraving technique. Can you please describe what inspired you to use this technique in your work?

Frieda Doerfer: Indeed. It has already been a few years since I started to explore the old engraving technique guilloché, also known as “engine turning.” I am still fascinated by the huge variety of possibilities that are created with basic forms like zigzags or wavy lines.

 

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Ann Culy: plain gold ring has a story to tell

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Ann CulyAnn Culy has a thing for rings. Using ancient techniques for making them, she is showing a variety of rings at the Avid Gallery in New Zealand. Avid has recently joined the galleries who support Art Jewelry Forum. We  welcome their addition, which adds to the texture and variety of the artists we interview.

Susan Cummins: Were you born and raised in New Zealand?

Ann Culy: Yes, in Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

Can you tell the story of how you became a jeweler?

Ann Culy: I discovered working with metal at art school, in the printmaking studio and in the sculpture department, where I worked on a small scale using lost-wax casting in bronze. The combination of melting, pouring, and manipulation of metal has been a constant joy and led me directly to jewelry making, where I can fuse all those skills together.

 

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Patrycja Zwierzynska: Ephemeras

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Patrycja ZwierzynskaToronto-based artist Patrycja Zwierzynska transforms metal into delicate, abstract sculptures that are inspired by natural forms. Her work is driven by exploring materials and processes in unique ways to capture form and volume, often leading to surprising results. The result of her most recent exploration is Ephemeras, an exhibition at L. A. Pai Gallery that centers on themes of ephemerality and impermanence and explores ideas about process. We had a chance to catch up with Patrycja to learn more about her work and how the idea of “ephemeras” is captured in her jewelry. 

Bonnie Levine: Tell us about your background and how you found your way to being a jewelry maker. 

Patrycja Zwierzynska: I went to art school without the specific intention of becoming a jeweler. Art was always something I was involved in, and I wanted to pursue my passion for it. In my second year at school, I took an introductory jewelry course and got hooked on working with metal and the finesse it required. I became obsessive about polishing and fitting pieces together perfectly. Working with the material really spoke to me, and pretty soon, the jewelry projects I was working on were all I was thinking about. 

 

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Ike Jünger: Jewelry

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Ike JüngerIke Jünger, the well-known German jeweler from Munich, is currently having an exhibition at Galerie Rosemarie Jäger, where she is showcasing pieces from the past five years. She is known for her subtle enamel work. Her technique conveys both color and texture with beauty and unusual sensitivity. We took this opportunity to talk to Ike about her work, influences, and family legacy. 

Bonnie Levine: Can you tell us about the work you’re currently presenting at Galerie Rosemarie Jäger? How does it develop your work from the past?

Ike Jünger: In this exhibition I show pieces mainly from the last five years. During this period I developed my work from different starting points. On the one hand I made pieces inspired by nature, and on the other, pieces with strict geometrical shapes and clear colors. Some people may not understand these two different approaches. In my presentation at Rosemarie Jäger, I want to show the connection I see between these two. For example, you can take the geometrical pieces as a reaction to the organic ones. There was a point when I felt there was no progress in my work. It was no longer a challenge to produce these organic brooches. So you might say that one form of expression is a response to the other.

 

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25 years of Ted Noten

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Atelier Ted NotenTed Noten … well, what can you say? He is a phenomenon in this small world of art jewelry. He has become an atelier, not a lone maker; he has developed see-through purses and bags, not just jewelry; he has made videos; he designed the AJF pin in 2012; he cut up a luxury car and made the pieces into brooches; he has written a manifesto; and so much more. This show at Putti Gallery is a retrospective of 25 years of his work. We had to take the opportunity to interview him.

Susan Cummins: You said, “Your story can only get through to people if you rob them of their prejudices about jewellery.” How do you do that?

Ted Noten: I play with greed and seduce by aesthetics, using archetypes that people can recognize and loads of humor. These elements make my work possible to enter and then there are more layers of comments, criticisms, condensations of meanings. All this without being moralistic! But through absurdist mirroring.

 

 

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Daniel Kruger: Angle of Incidence

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Daniel Kruger: Between Nature and Artifice, Jewellery 1974–2014Daniel Kruger, who is a professor at the University for Art and Design in Halle, Germany, is currently having an exhibition at Sienna Patti, among many other things. For one, he has just produced a beautiful monograph published by Arnoldsche, and for another he has accompanying shows at the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Leipzig, Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus in Hanau, and the Stedelijk Museum ’s-Hertogenbosch. This series of exhibitions and the book took many years of planning and are a huge accomplishment. Daniel Kruger is everywhere.

Susan Cummins: Daniel, you are having quite a moment right now, with a new book, Daniel Kruger: Between Nature and Artifice, Jewellery 1974–2014, and a series of four museum shows, plus of course this exhibition with Sienna Gallery. How long have you been planning these events and how did the plans develop?

Daniel Kruger: The planning started a long time ago because the exhibitions and book were originally scheduled for 2010. I had approached Cornelie Holzach of the Schmuckmuseum in Pforzheim about doing an exhibition there. She agreed, and this was a particular honor as I had already had an exhibition there in 1984 and this would be my second show at this museum. After that I asked Yvonne Joris of the Stedelijk Museum s’-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands (she died last year) if she would give the exhibition a second venue. There too I had had solo exhibitions in the past initiated by Yvonne in the two municipal museums preceding the present Stedelijk Museum in s’Hertogenbosch: 1981 at the Dienst Beeldende Kunst, De Moriaan and 1994 at the Museum het Kruithuis “Five Stones and a Small Feint”. The project grew with the Goldschmiedehaus in Hanau to where my exhibition of 1984 in Pforzheim had followed from Pforzheim and the Grassi Museum in Leipzig that now will be the initiator of this series of exhibitions. Between one thing and another, the shows were postponed and the order of the exhibitions changed around. This gave me a lot of time and leisure to do the planning.

 

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Courtney Kemp and Karen Vanmol: Home

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Karen VanmolHeidi Lowe Gallery is currently having a two-person show called Home, featuring the work of Courtney Kemp and Karen Vanmol.

Courtney Kemp, who lives in Oregon, keeps both a jewelry and a sculpture practice. In her jewelry, she restructures mundane, domestic bits of living spaces into contemporary and precious wearables. She currently teaches at the Oregon College of Art and Craft and the University of Oregon.

Karen Vanmol, a jewelry artist based in Belgium, explores the tension between city and countryside as familiar childhood landscapes fade and as her understanding of the world is constantly “under construction.” This is her fourth time showing work at the Heidi Lowe Gallery.

Olivia Shih: Can you talk about your background and about how you found your way to making jewelry?

Courtney Kemp: Growing up, I was always excited about building and making. We lived on a farm that had been in my father’s family for years and was filled with really archaic architecture and machinery, so there was the consistent need for repairing and rebuilding. I fell into making jewelry in college without any prior experience or concrete knowledge about the field, but with a solid background in tinkering. I feel it was more the material itself that drew me in, rather than the format. The potentials of working with metal seemed endless.

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Silke Spitzer: Breathing

Interviews /

Silke SpitzerSilke Spitzer’s exhibition Breathing was recently on display at Ornamentum Gallery in Hudson, New York, from July 12 through August 10. In this interview, Silke describes the relationships between her life and work, and her materials and surroundings. 

Missy Graff: How did you become interested in making jewelry? Please describe your background.

Silke Spitzer: Growing up as the daughter of an arts, music, and sports teacher, I cannot remember a time when I was not creating or making something. I was always sitting or kneeling barefoot on the ground, carving, drawing, sewing, painting, cutting, scribbling, collecting, adding, and combining the things that surrounded me. To me, creating and living have always seemed to be the same. The beauty of nature, light, smell, the deepness of a voice, a thought or special sound, have always touched me. 

Growing up, I always considered creating a living by making with my own hands to be my dream job and life’s goal. Et voilà! I feel the same way today.

Why jewelry? Well, I guess it just happened. I grew up with the desire to create. Making jewelry was just one option I decided to explore. The tools seemed interesting and the scale seemed manageable. I enjoy the intimacy of making a piece all alone, by myself from the very beginning to the very end. I am very interested in the solitude that working on a small scale offers, a familiar scale, my body’s scale, a scale that is very much my soul’s size. 

 

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Jorge Manilla: Beyond the Limits

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Jorge ManillaIn the past few years, Jorge Manilla has created a personal style of work that is the result of his Mexican background and conceptual education in Europe. In his work, Manilla often manipulates a wide array of materials to make sense of the intricate and painful relationship people have with religion. Currently, he is simultaneously working as a guest teacher, an artist, and a PhD student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp. On the occasion of his show, called Beyond the Limits, at Galerie Ra in Amsterdam, I had a chance to ask him a few questions.

Olivia Shih: You first received technical jewelry training at the school of Design and Crafts (Mexican Institute of Fine Arts) in Mexico before enrolling at St Lucas University College of Art and Design Antwerp in Belgium for your master’s degree. How did this transition influence your work? 

Jorge Manilla: My education in Mexico opened a world of possibilities. Those years taught me that a piece of classical jewelry acquires its value by the materials and techniques used, as well as by its aesthetic and wearability. When I learned how to make jewelry I started selling it straight away, but I often asked myself, why did I do it? Who did I do it for?
Soon after that, I decided to move to Belgium. A year of sculpture at the Academy of Art in Ghent was the perfect bridge to start my contemporary jewelry education. During that year, I started to think more deeply about ideas, concepts, and processes.

At St Lucas, I learned to make jewelry by not making jewelry. During that time I forced myself not to think about the portability of the piece; I stopped using precious metals, which I think was one of the most difficult things to do.

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