theory

What Is Jewelry Really?

We create and wear jewelry because we do not want to feel alone. But “not wanting to feel alone” can mean different things to different people. The jewelry artist must have insight here. The artist needs to understand what jewelry really is in order to make successful choices about forms, materials, design elements, inspirations, techniques,

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Contemporary Jewelry is Not A Look–Its a Way of Thinking

Contemporary jewelry represents a specific approach for thinking through design. Making jewelry is, in essence, an authentic performance task. The jewelry artisan applies knowledge, skill, and awareness in anticipation of the influence and constraints of a set of shared understandings. Shared understandings relate to composition, construction, and performance. These understandings are enduring, transferable, big ideas

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Jewelry Design Composition: Playing With Building Blocks Called Design Elements

Jewelry making is a constructive process of expression. The language of expression begins with the idea of design elements. Design elements are the smallest meaningful units of design. Design elements function in a similar way as vowels and consonants in a language. They have form. They have meaning. They have expression. Some can stand alone,

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Re: Halcyon Dream Catalogue

Excerpt from Shannon Stratton’s essay regarding Anna Lindsay MacDonald’s 2016 solo exhibition, Re: Halcyon Dream: “Anna Lindsay MacDonald’s work seems to resonate with Soulilliou’s theory of ornament, playing with the idea of appearance and disappearance in the face of technology. Her black and white palette recalls dazzle camouflage, but even more so, predicts a future

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Go For Baroque: Opulence and Excess in Contemporary Art

This text explores how theoretical concepts of opulence and excess are explored in contemporary art, especially jewelry. Images of several exhibited works are included. Focusing on artists from the United States and Western Europe, it offers a Western-based interdisciplinary perspective for thinking about what “baroque” could mean in a modern context. Jewelry forms the basis

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