Namita Gupta Wiggers is curator at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, where she leads the exhibition, collection and public programs. Wiggers combines a background in art history, museum education, anthropology, design research, teaching and writing into a program that explores craft, design and curating…
Opening night at SOFA NY The Park Avenue Armory is much as the name suggests: a building completed in 1881 for the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard. SOFA NY (April 14-17, 2011) is held in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, a huge space of about 200 by 300 feet with a barrel-vaulted roof spanned…
Since its inception in the mid-twentieth century, art jewelry has been defined by limited hand production in an artistic studio-practice paradigm. However, in the 1980s, advances in computer-aided design and manufacturing technologies led to the expansion of this definition, rendering the studio and hand manufacturing useful characterizations rather than steadfast criteria for defining art jewelry….
This essay was first delivered as a talk at SOFA Chicago in November 2010. Watching, Looking, Learning ‘And viewers like you.’ The title of this talk was stolen from the PBS sign-off to most of their programs. They thank various corporations, foundations and individuals and then they thank ‘viewers like you.’ They are expressing gratitude…
This essay was first delivered on a panel ‘Touch in Contemporary Art’ at the College Art Association, Los Angeles, in 2009, through travel funds provided by the Society of North American Goldsmiths. The paper was further developed into a lecture and presented at SOFA Chicago in November 2009 and subsequently presented at University of El…
This essay was developed from the lecture ‘Holding Objects: What It Means to Wear Jewelry: The Psychoanalytic Mechanisms,’ presented at the Facets of Meaning symposium at Tacoma Art Museum, June 28, 2009. A version of the talk was also presented at SOFA NY in June 2010. Marcia Macdonald, If You Sit Still … You Can…
Individuals have as many reasons to buy and/or collect objects as there are objects available. Jewelry is one of the more personal passions in collecting due to its connection to our bodies. After all, most objects cannot be presented to the world on a daily basis in such an intimate manner as jewelry. We present…
Elizabeth Shypertt is co-owner of Velvet da Vinci, a contemporary jewelry gallery in San Francisco. (The name was inspired by an old Perry Mason television episode.) She is also the outgoing AJF treasurer. Elizabeth recently answered some questions posed by Sally von Bargen. As always, her point of view is insightful and wonderfully light-hearted. As…
Homer, Alaska, is a fishing and art community near Bristol Bay. The vast and breathtakingly beautiful Bristol Bay ecosystem is home to immense fisheries, the world’s largest concentration of brown bears, massive herds of caribou and countless species of migratory birds. Homer is where jeweler and conservation advocate Rika Mouw lives. As Rika ends her…
In May 2007, Sally von Bargen interviewed Jo Lauria, a long time AJF member and previous board member. She is the chief curator for the touring exhibition Craft in America: Expanding Traditions and co-author of the companion book Craft in America: Celebrating Two Centuries of Artists and Objects. Cover, Jo Lauria and Steve Fenton (ed),…
