Culture

Zimmerhof 2012

Conferences are strange creatures. They lure you into the depths and then drown you in overstimulation. And this conference had all of the allure – the presence of some of the best thinkers in the field – and all of the overstimulation, tempered somewhat by a farmyard location and a leisurely pace. I have complained

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Metal Zero

In late 2001, lower Manhattan was the site of intense physical, psychological and emotional activity. Many thousands of people were working to clean, to clear and to understand the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Scurrying through the streets – beneath notice – was Xu Bing, busily collecting the dust that coated the city. In

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Loaded

I’ve been trying to understand a trend, not just in art jewelry, but pop culture in general. The sharp, angular shapes of handguns and semi-automatic rifles as graphic black silhouettes or cheeky, bubblegum pink outlines are everywhere. T-shirts, decals, pendants and even cufflinks – guns, apparently, are ‘in.’ Karl Lagerfeld, Gunshoe Now I will be

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Art Jewelry 2.0

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.

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Austerity Measures

Darren Waterston, Hpertrophy (crustacea), 2010, crabs, paint, courtesy of the artist and the Inman Gallery, Houston Hermann Jünger, Necklace, 1957, gold 1000/750, rubies, sapphires, moonstone, culture pearls, enamel, emeralds, exhibited at the Brussels World’s Fair 1958, donation of the artist to Die Neue Sammlung – The International Design Museum Munich, courtesy of Die Neue Sammlung

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Lauren Kalman Talks About Dichotomies of Place and Object

Lauren Kalman is curator of Dichotomies of Place and Object, an exhibition of South African contemporary jewelry that is currently showing in the United States. AJF asked her some questions about the exhibition and the work featured in it. Nanette Nel, Verkeerdom Protea Brooch, 2007, silicone, silver Dichotomies of Place and Object: Contemporary South African Studio

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The Change We Can Wear

This essay was first published in Signs of Change: Jewellery Designed to Make a Better World (Perth: Form, 2010). The accompanying exhibition was held at FORM Gallery in Perth, Australia, from April 9–May 30, 2010. On the Tiger’s Back Helen Britton and Justine McKnigh, Necklace Brooch T-shirts We can see the contemporary jewelry movement playing

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