Artist

Galerie Ra in Amsterdam was an early champion of contemporary jewelry. It was established in 1976 by Paul Derrez, a jeweler and legendary visionary. Paul continues to run his gallery and this month we catch an exhibition there of the work of Johanna Dahm. She is doing the same rings as she has for a long time but with Enhancements, which is the title of the show.

Susan Cummins: You have probably answered this question many times, so I have to request your patience, but you are known for making rings using a casting technique acquired from the African Ashanti and Indian Dokra. Can you please talk about that process?

Johanna Dahm: Compared to other lost-wax casting methods around the world, theirs is unique and genius. Both cultures, living so far apart, not even aware of each other, share a process aptly described as casting in a closed cycle. Yes, the wax model is lost after it has been encased in clay and melted out, yet is still there in its negative. This shell is joined with a layer of clay to the crucible containing the metal, looking like a Babushka. An old oil barrel serves as a furnace, like those of the Ashanti. I love the 1100-degree heat and the smell of glowing bright yellow coal. With long tongs the glowing forms are pulled out of the furnace and merely flipped upside down for casting. This is the closed cycle technique, everything mysteriously hidden to the eye, no separate melting and pouring of the metal. The most exciting part is cracking open the form. Has the piece been cast successfully, or is everything lost? This closed cycle process has great advantage, but as usual only if mastered. Lost and Found: The Ashanti Trail to Rings was thus the title of my first book.

Karl Fritsch, the prolific, original jeweler is having a show at Galerie Rosemarie Jaeger in Hochheim, a little town outside of Frankfurt, Germany. It is a beautiful space as you will see in the installation shots and contrasts beautifully with Karl’s ‘misshapen’ jewelry.

Susan Cummins: Gerd Rothmann wrote about the bowl you created for this show by saying: ‘Out of this bar of gold Karl Fritsch has wrought, using a heavy hammer in a somewhat disrespectful (if not brutal, or in any case quite unsubtle) way, a somewhat misshapen looking bowl. It would seem that he went about doing this with the express desire to shatter any professional notion of aesthetics: the manner in which he mistreated the precious and venerated material was admirably cheeky.’ Your approach is disquieting. Why do you work this way?

Karl Fritsch: If I answer that question I can tell you the story of my life, or I can say I don’t know. I think the text from Gerd gives a answer and it is my ultimate pleasure and reason to make work like that, if somebody can engage with it in the way Gerd does. No bullshit! The bit of text you quote is taken from a longer text. It might help to read the whole text as it gives some ideas about answers.

‘(First you have to imagine one kilogram of pure 24 carat gold: its weight; its golden yellow lustre; its softness. Merchants used to bite on gold coins, testing if the gold was genuine on the basis of the indentation made by their teeth.

Klimt02 is most famous in the jewelry community as a website where the full breath of the field is displayed. It is a fabulous resource, but it is also a gallery in Barcelona, Spain, started by Leo Caballero and Amador Bertomeu. This month they are featuring an exhibition by the indomitable New Zealand jeweler Lisa Walker.

Susan Cummins: You have received recognition through prizes like the 2010 Francoise van den Bosch award and your work has been collected by museums in New Zealand and Europe. You have certainly taken the lead in producing some of the most challenging contemporary jewelry this field has ever seen. What are you thinking?

Lisa Walker: Thank you! I’ll cut and paste that for my next book, like a show off. There’s often a fine line between showing off and informing people about what you do, (like Facebook, etc) or total overkill. It’s almost an uncomfortable experience to post and post and email and email about yourself, sort of hand over eyes and click. Anyway I haven’t really answered you. What am I thinking? In a sentence, I’m thinking about jewelry, about art, about materials, about ideas, about no ideas, about how far I can go that it still makes sense, about resonance, about love, about life, culture, about myself, about the world, politics, about that innate humanness and wonder in brilliant work, about what is good – and that will do for now.

Vander A Contemporary Art Jewellery in Brussels, Belgium, owned by Françoise Vanderauwera, is doing some very interesting things to bring jewelry into the contemporary art scene there. This wonderfully quirky show by Anja Eichler currently on view at the gallery became an occasion for the gallery to plan a project based on the jewelry, which resulted in a video.

Susan Cummins: Your new show at Vander A Gallery is called Urbanauts. What does that word mean?

Anja Eichler: Urbanaut (pl. Urbanauts) is an invented word. Its roots come from Latin ‘urbanus’ = urbanized, courteous, witty and from Greek: ‘nautés’ = sailors. An Urbanaut cruises the cities as a sailor does the seas. I am an Urbanaut. I sail through the life of Shanghai. I navigate in a culture that is not mine, among people who are foreign to me and who do not speak my language. The pieces that I made last year in Shanghai reflect my impressions and experiences in the city. Hence, I called this series ‘Urbanauts.’

I understand that you are German but now live in Shanghai. Why are you there?

Originally I lived in Berlin and I moved to Shanghai a year ago. My husband wanted to live abroad for some time after having been in Berlin for ten years. So we were looking for a place where we could both pursue our careers. That place was Shanghai. Funnily, there is also another part of that story. My husband and I were in Shanghai seven years ago and at that time I was already fascinated by the city. And I said to my husband, ‘I could very well envision living here for two years.’ Back then, it was just said in a rush of emotions as a tourist being fascinated by ‘exotic’ and foreign surroundings. But it became real. 

I have already lived in foreign countries: in the United States, in Italy and for a few months in France. I am very curious about foreign cultures and environments and love to explore them. Of course, traveling is also a possibility for getting new impressions. However, I think that one is much more forced to reflect on oneself and to challenge traditional perspectives when living in another country and experiencing the daily life.

Mobilia Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, has been exclusively representing Mariko Kusumoto for many years. The gallery is owned and run by the sisters Joanne and Libby Cooper. They represent many major craft artists in a variety of media but jewelry has always had a strong presence. Mariko exists on the edge of jewelry making. In other words she sometimes makes jewelry but she mainly makes magical boxes and sometimes they contain jewelry. Her fertile imagination and unusual background have lead to some wonderful pieces, which we will discuss in this interview.

Susan Cummins: You have told the story many times that you were raised in Japan in a Buddhist temple and then moved to the United States. How old were you when you moved?

Mariko Kusumoto: I was 23 years old.

Did you study jewelry and metal work here or in Japan? Tell us about your training.

Mariko Kusumoto: I attended a high school that offered a fine art major, where I learned the basic skills of drawing, sculpture, design and painting. After that I went to Musashino Art College in Tokyo. For the first two years, my major was oil painting and then I transferred to printmaking, focusing on etching. I moved to San Francisco and attended the Academy of Art University, where I pursued printmaking. However right before I graduated, I took a book art class and also beginner and intermediate jewelry and small metal art sculpture classes, which completely changed my direction from two-dimensional work to three-dimensional. I’m not a printmaker anymore but I use etching techniques for much of my work. When I was into printmaking, I was always fascinated by etched metal more than by the printed images on the paper.

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.