Artist

Jeweler’sWerk Galerie in Washington, DC is having a marvelous exhibition with Australian Sally Marsland this month. Sally’s show has the very long title Everything depends on what we would rather do than change. It is accompanied by a catalog that’s remarkable in its honesty and humor about making work and living life. I was delighted by it and by her answers to my questions.

Susan Cummins: Can you tell me how you came to make jewelry?

Sally Marsland: When I was 12 I obsessively drew house plans and elevations on 5-mm graph paper, carefully placing windows and doors and furniture etc. I decided the logical conclusion was to become an architect. I followed this through to university, and then fell in a huge heap part way through as it dawned on me that perhaps the obsessive drawing had been a symbol of something else. I was studying architecture at RMIT University in Melbourne, and after a year of depression, I started in the jewelry course there. I studied at RMIT for five years and worked with the late Melbourne sculptor Akio Makigawa (husband of jeweler Carlier Makigawa) while I set up my own practice. I studied for two years with Otto Künzli in Munich. Since 2000, I have been back in Melbourne where I work and live with my husband Stephen Bram, an abstract painter, and our two sons.

Jewelry has been filled with plant forms from the beginning of its history, and these forms continue to intrigue jewelers from all parts of the world. Fingers Contemporary New Zealand Jewellery was founded in 1974 by a group of jewelers in Auckland. This month, the gallery is featuring a jeweler intrigued with plant forms. In fact, she has a horticultural degree. Lynn Kelly is absorbed more deeply than most by the use of plant forms as inspiration for her work.

Susan Cummins: Can you give us the story of how you became a jeweler? Please include your geographical locations, schools, etc.

Lynn Kelly: My parents emigrated from Northern Ireland. I found myself very interested in jewelry while travelling to Britain in the early 1980s to meet my wider family. I cannot pin down any particular person or event that started my desire to make. Once I returned to New Zealand and attempted to get metal training, I realized that I was too old for an apprenticeship, and at that time there was no other formal method of training in New Zealand.

Julie Blyfield is intrigued with plant forms as many jewelers have been over the millennium. She is looking at Australian plants, and this gives her an edge on unusual shapes and patterns. Second Nature, her show at Gallery Funaki, is a very concise look at how plant patterns translate into silver.

Susan Cummins: Can you give us the story of how you became a jeweler?

Julie Blyfield: My passion for jewelry and metal began in 1976. I was training to be a secondary school art teacher at Torrens College of Advanced Education at Underdale, west of Adelaide, in South Australia. (Now it is the University of South Australia, City West.) Carole-Ann Fooks was my jewelry lecturer. She introduced me to working with metal combined with mixed materials, such as bone, shell, and casting.

For many years, I taught jewelry making in secondary schools while making my own pieces at home in my spare time. I lived in regional South Australia when I first started teaching, so I had plenty of spare time to pursue my interest and passion.

Next, I returned to live in Adelaide and went back to night classes at Adelaide College of the Arts and Education to learn a few more skills, including enameling, chasing, and repoussé. In 1985, I enrolled in an associate diploma in jewelry making and joined Gray Street Workshop, a jewelry collective in Adelaide. I began as an access tenant, and then became a partner in the workshop that lasted 23 years.

Platina, Sofia Bjorkman’s gallery in Stockholm, Sweden, has a fascinating program featuring mostly young and thoughtful artists. This month, Hanna Hedman is showing a collection of her work in a mournful exhibition called Black Bile.

Susan Cummins: Can you tell me about your background and how you decided to become a jeweler?

Hanna Hedman: I have always been creative. As a young child, I loved making objects and drawings. My family always encouraged my creativity,  even though they were not artists themselves. I started to dabble in jewelry by breaking my mother’s necklaces and reassembling them into what I believed were better versions. I was also a professional skier at a very young age, and skiing was a major part of my life for a long time. But, I always felt the need to express myself more with my hands. I made my first piece of jewelry while attending the University of Colorado on a skiing scholarship from 1999 to 2001. My work wasn’t very artistic at the start. I was drawn to the many possibilities of shaping metal. This is something that still intrigues me very much. My art life eventually superseded my sports life, and I haven’t stopped making since then. I work with jewelry for many reasons, but one is to explore jewelry’s direct relationship with the body.

Jeweler April Higashi runs Shibumi Gallery in Berkeley, California. She shows mainly local jewelers and American jewelers who make well-designed, wearable work. Her gallery is located in a retail/manufacturing area, and her living quarters are right above the gallery. It is a wonderful space. April has discovered a lovely maker named Maya Kini, who is having her first full-scale solo show, Silk, at the gallery. Maya brings a complex background to her work.

Susan Cummins: Maya, can you tell me about your background? Your place of origin? Your schooling? How you became a jeweler?

Maya Kini: I was born and raised in the Boston area, the fourth of five children by parents from vastly different worlds. My mother is Italian American from New England, and my father emigrated from India in 1957 to get his PhD. He decided to stay in the US after meeting my mother. From a young age, I was given jewelry by visiting Indian relatives—bangles, anklets, and fine gold chains. Adornment begins at a young age in India and evolves into a complex language of beauty, wealth, and status.

I studied sculpture and literature at Reed College and eventually wrote my thesis on the translation of Catholicism and its earliest dispersion into New Spain. I received my degree in Spanish literature in 2000. In 1996, I was introduced to jewelry making in Mexico, and that seed developed into further study, apprenticeships with other jewelers, and eventually an MFA in metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art. I received my degree in 2007 under the guidance of Gary Griffin (2005–2006) and Iris Eichenberg (2006–2007). Currently, I operate my own small studio that focuses on commissions, multiples, and one-of-a-kind pieces.

The National Ornamental Metal Museum is dedicated to the exhibition, collection, conservation, restoration, education, and research of metalwork. It is the only American institution that devotes itself entirely to this cause. They have started an exhibition series called Tributaries, which refers to the Mississippi River running next to the museum and indicates a meandering retrospective of an artist’s work. For the past few months, the museum has featured the work of Lola Brooks. Lola is a maker of traditionally inspired jewelry wrapped in untraditional garb. (Her recent interview on this blog is worth a second look.) As always, Lola is a pleasure to read and an all around smart contributor to the thoughtful pursuit of making jewelry.

Susan Cummins: Lola, congratulations on being chosen to design the AJF pin for 2013. This is only the third year we have commissioned a pin for our supporters, so you are among a very elite group that includes Arthur Hash and Ted Noten. Not too long ago, we had a pretty great interview for your show at Sienna Gallery, and you answered my questions then with humor, thoughtfulness, and intelligence. We covered a lot of territory at that time, so it may be challenging to come up with new questions. Let’s start with this—Where are living now, and what you are doing?

Lola Brooks: Thank you Susan. It was such an honor to be chosen to design the brooch for AJF this year, and it has been quite an adventure seeing it through. I cannot wait to pin one on my person!

Let see now … where am I living, and what am I doing? I have to agree that this is a great place to start. It has been a year of tumultuous upheaval and transformation for me in every possible way. After almost a quarter-century in New York City, the place I have long considered my heart and soul, I tore up my roots and moved to rural Georgia, about 18 miles (29 km) outside of Athens. Although the move happened fast and seemingly came out of left field, it was not completely capricious.

Dutch artist Lucy Sarneel is presenting new work in the exhibition Soulmates at Galerie Marzee in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, through February. Sarneel continues to reinvent her work while still keeping her signature use of zinc forms. This jewelry is fresh and colorful with a liveliness often missing from well-established artists’ work. She seems still open to experimentation and new ideas. Nice job.

Susan Cummins: Lucy, I understand that you studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, that you taught there for many years, and now you are about to become the head of the department. Congratulations. Many incredible jewelers have come from that school. Can you tell me what is the secret to their success?

Lucy Sarneel: I have taught in the jewelry department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie for almost four years with some short periods of guest teaching previously, so it’s not that many years by my count. The secret to the school’s success could be attributed to the emphasis on the working process rather than working toward the result. Developing ideas as a constant dialogue between the idea and the material. The attempts and the failures. The doing and reflecting. Thinking in possibilities and not in solutions. This way of working opens personal potential and ways of looking, thinking, and making that the student learns to rely on, making him or her an independent artist.

Charon Kransen Arts is a gallery and bookstore located on the Upper West Side of New York City. Their show schedule consists of a regular series of fairs. Charon Kransen Arts recently organized an exhibit for Art Palm Beach (January 24–28). We took advantage of this opportunity to feature one of the artists they represent, Julia Barello. Julia got her start as a jeweler and is now doing very large installations, which is what she will show at Art Palm Beach.

Susan Cummins: Julia, first can you give me some idea of where you live and about your background? Schooling? Etc.

Julia Barello: I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico. It is the second largest city in New Mexico and part of a large metropolitan area formed by El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Las Cruces is part of the Chihuahuan desert (not the Sonoran desert of Arizona). The city is in a river valley formed by the Rio Grande, and the Organ Mountains form the eastern border.

I grew up in Bellevue, Washington and always considered myself a North westerner, but the Southwest has grown on me! My undergraduate education was at Fairhaven College, an interdisciplinary program housed at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. My degree was formed from research in anthropology, art history, and studio art. For the most part, I worked in textiles, weaving, and surface design, but near the end of my studies I discovered metals. I was taken with the processes and by the sense that I could use them to make anything from jewelry to teapots to sculptures and fit it all under that umbrella.

vander A Gallery is owned and run by Françoise Vanderauwera in Brussels, Belgium. It represents a very challenging group of young artists who are taking fascinating risks. This month, Clarisse Bruynbroeck travels some very emotional terrain with her work called The Marked Body. By investigating the effects of anorexia on those close to the disease, she exposes a topic close to the site of jewelry—the body. It is a topic that has just been waiting to be explored.

Susan Cummins: Clarisse, what is your background? Where are you from, and where are you now? Where did you go to school, and was there a teacher who was a major influence on you?

Clarisse Bruynbroeck: I’m from Bruges and studied in the jewelry department at Sint Lucas Antwerp. There, I learned that there is more than the common jewel. Sigfried De Buck and Hilde De Decker showed me that, each in their own way. At Sint Lucas, I learned a lot about art, jewelry, and myself.

The first time I encountered Felieke van der Leest was at an AJF-sponsored talk in 2004. She was funny and imaginative and also extremely practical somehow. She was playful, for sure, which probably adds to the appeal of her work. It is outstanding and unusual partly because it is just plain accessible. Anyone can enjoy what she does. Felieke is having a show this month at the active and lively Galerie Rob Koudijs in Amsterdam. She has reached back into her childhood memories to create creatures from the Wild West.

Susan Cummins: Where did you study, and who were your early influences?

Felieke van der Leest: From 1986 until 1991, I studied at the technical school for goldsmithing and silversmithing in Schoonhoven, Netherlands. I was a fan of the surrealist Salvador Dali and Egyptian jewelry. From 1991 until 1996, I studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I have no idea who and what influenced me. Those years were a struggle. Fortunately, in my graduation year, the head of the jewelry department Ruudt Peters noticed some textile crochet work I made for fun. He allowed me to see that what I made was special. Luckily, I listened. From that moment on, I have worked nonstop making jewelry and objects.