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AJF NEWSLETTER
MARCH

2011

A LETTER FROM THE AJF BOARD CHAIR

Greetings! 

Will you be coming on the AJF trip to SNAG in Seattle? You'll get to hang out with your charming fellow AJF members, hobnob with famous international writers, and spend time with jewelers who are talented and clever. And did I mention the food? Sign up now!! Click here.

 

This is the time of year that your AJF membership really gives you immediate value for your buck. It offers you VIP passes to SOFA New York and COLLECT in London. Hopefully you can take advantage of this benefit.

 

If you want to order your VIP pass for COLLECT, contact Matthew Turtle at the British Crafts Council: [email protected]. The deadline for registering is 7 March 2011. These passes will get you into the opening night festivities and other tours that are in the process of being planned. The AJF gallery members who will be showing at COLLECT are:

Sign up for your SOFA VIP passes at www.sofaexpo.com/ajfvip/. It will allow you access to all the VIP tours and, most importantly, entrance to the opening night for free. Please also plan to attend the following jewelry related events and talks .  

  • Thursday April 14th at 10 am - join AJF in a walk through the jewelry galleries. Damian Skinner and Toni Greenbaum will pick out their favorite jewelry at SOFA and discuss it. Meet in the entry of the Armory at 10 am.  Dr Damian Skinner is an art historian and curator from New Zealand, and the editor of the AJF website and blog. He is currently working on a major book about contemporary jewelry that will be published by Lark Books in 2013. Toni Greenbaum is an art historian, specializing in twentieth and twenty-first century jewelry and metalwork. She is the author of Messengers of Modernism: American Studio Jewelry, 1940-1960 as well as numerous exhibition catalogues, book chapters, and journal essays.
  • Thursday April 14th at 11:30 am - A talk by Jeannine Falino, curator at the Museum of Arts and Design called 'For People Who are Slightly Mad: American Modernist Jewelry'. This is a talk co sponsored by AJF and SNAG, and explores the iconoclastic artists who translated the excitement of surrealism and modernism into wearable jewelry.
  • Friday April 15th at 1:30 Lisa Walker will be speaking about her jewelry in a talk called 'Sometimes'.
  • Saturday April 16th at 1:30 Sergey Jivetin (former AJF Emerging Artist Awardee) and Jennifer Trask will discuss their own jewelry and their shared studio practices.
  • Throughout the week try to find some time to visit the Forbes Gallery in Greenwich Village who are showing an exhibition arranged by ASJRA and called Jewelers of the Hudson Valley. It features the work of seven prominent jewelry artists: Jennifer Trask, Tom Herman, Pat Flynn, Jamie Bennett, Myra Mimlitsch-Gray, Arthur Hash and Sergey Jivetin. The show also includes pieces from the collection of the Samuel Dorsky Museum, State University of New York/New Paltz, and selected works by students and graduates of the prestigious metals' program at SUNY/New Paltz.
  • And last but not least, visit the project space at SOFA organized by Sienna Patti called Costume Costume and get your photo taken wearing jewelry of your choice.

Many of the AJF member galleries will be at SOFA including:  

I also hope to see a number of you on the trip to Seattle in May, and in New York and London before that. We will have seen lots of great jewelry by then!

 

Take care,


Susan Cummins
AJF Chair

Seattle marketSEATTLE BOUND!   

Collection tours - check 

Intimate artists talks - check  

Delicious dining - check 

The May AJF trip to Seattle is planned!  Click here to get in on the action.  Deadline for registering is April 8th

Doug BucciART JEWELRY 2.0

by Gabriel Craig
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. Click to read more.
NOTHING IF NOT CRITICAL
by Damian Skinner

Why doesn't contemporary jewelry have a tradition of critical discourse?

First up, this question does need to be understood as a rhetorical gambit, an attempt to provoke discussion. Contemporary jewelry does have a tradition of critical discourse - evidenced by the fact that I can write this post on this website about a topic like this and it is in no way an extraordinary or novel experience.  Click to read more.
Gerd Rothman BraceletJEWELS ON TOUR
by Vivien Atkinson
TarraWarra Museum of Art is situated a short drive from Melbourne. Located in a landscape of rolling hills that juxtaposes manicured vineyards with paddocks of dry grass and stands of aromatic gum trees, this impressive Museum is home to the considerable collection of modern art donated along with the building to the people of Australia by Eva and Marc Besen. Click to read more.
Lisa Walker Tiki NecklacesPRODUCTION PIECE
Glenn Adamson has written an interesting review of a show called Multiples, which was recently on display at AJF member Galerie SO in London. As Adamson writes, 'Frankly entitled Multiples - in the craft world a code word for "affordable production work" - the show features most of the gallery's stable and a few guest artists, all of whom were invited to make serial works. Click to read more.
Nathalie-Perret_Paliceder-necklaceBONJOUR BIJOU
by Damian Skinner
Also Known as Jewellery* is the catalog which accompanies an exhibition of the same name, which has been touring around the world for the last couple of years. (The exhibition venues were Flow, London; Alternatives, Rome; Velvet Da Vinci, San Francisco; and Villa Bengel, Idar-Oberstein; with a final viewing in Paris.)  Click to read more.
Nadja Djani NecklaceTRAVELING COMPANIONS
by Jennifer Cross Gans
It's rare to find good jewelry on board a ship, however grand, bound on a cruise to Portugal, Spain, Morocco and the Canary Islands. The jeweler in question will try to get you to buy gold, silver and the precious gemstone you are bound for, if any. Click to read more.
AJF RECOMMENDS. . .

 

Gallery Loupe have just published Thomas Gentille: Twenty-First Century, a stand-alone catalog featuring the work of this senior American contemporary jeweler. The publication is 120 pages, and features essays by Ursula Ilse-Neuman, Toni Greenbaum and Vanessa S. Lynn, a foreword by Gentille, and over 50 actual size color reproductions of his jewelry. You can order copies through the Gallery Loupe website by clicking here. 

 

Sigrid van Roode, a scholar of Middle Eastern jewelry who writes for Adornment magazine, has started a new website called Bedouin Silver, which provides information on traditional, nomadic and Bedouin adornment from the Middle East and North Africa. If you are interested in what's often called Ethnic or Tribal jewelry, then this site will provide information on the meanings and functions of adornment in this part of the world. To visit the website, click here .

 

Wichita Art Museum is currently showing The Art of Adornment: Artists Embellish the Body, an exhibition of fifteen Kansas artists who work with, on and about the human body. The show includes work by Marjorie Schick, and modernist jewelry by Mary Kretsinger and Mary Koch. You can visit the museum website by clicking here, and read an article about the exhibition by clicking here


A conference called Gold: Substance, Symbol, and Significance will being held in New York on 7 - 9 April 2011. According to the organizers, 'This conference takes an all-embracing look at this precious metal, considering it in all its physical manifestations - from mineral ingot, to coinage, to jewelry - and at all stages of its production and use.' One of the themes of the event will be contemporary work in gold, from both contemporary and conventional jewelers. To register, please click here.  

 

The Boston Globe has reviewed Atelier Janiy� and the Legacy of Miy� Matsukata, an exhibition at the Fuller Craft Museum that received publication funding from AJF. You can read the review by clicking here.

 

You can read an interview with Nora Atkinson, the curator of the exhibition Lisa Gralnick: The Gold Standard, on the Houston Centre for Contemporary Craft blog, by clicking here. You can also read AJF's review of the exhibition, first shown at Bellevue Arts Museum, by clicking here


Check out what Debbie Kuo, an administrator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has to say about her favorite jewelry in the collection by  clicking here.

A Bit of Clay on the Skin: New Ceramic Jewelry will be on view at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York City, from the 15 March to 4 September 2011. To visit the museum website, click here .

Lindsay Pollack, AJF member and contributor to our blog, has been named Editor-in-Chief of Art in America magazine. Congratulations, Lindsay! (To read about her appointment, click here.)

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York is currently showing an exhibition called Set in Style: The Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels. To visit the museum website, click here, and to read an interview in Wallpaper* magazine with the exhibition designer, click here.

Sotheby's is going to be auctioning the collection of Mark McDonald, a dealer of twentieth century design who played a key role in building the market for modernist furniture, ceramics, glass and jewelry. The auction, which you can find out more about by clicking here, will take place on 10 March 2011.  You can also read a New York Times article about the auction by clicking here.

The Sunday Times newspaper in South Africa broaches the subject of the brooch, in this article about the communicative potential of jewelry's least body-related form.

In 2007 French jeweler Philip Sajet received the Marzee Prize, which has enabled him to produce a publication of his work. You can find out more about this book, and the accompanying exhibition, by visiting the website of CODA in the Netherlands. (It also helps if you speak Dutch.)

AJF member Susan Beech is profiled in the latest issue of Metalsmith magazine, in an article by Mija Riedel. (See 'Susan Beech: Driving force', Metalsmith v.31, n.1, 2011, pp.22-25.) Unsurprisingly for those who know her, Beech's collection is described as 'a body of jewelry that exudes curiosity, theatricality, sexuality, and an irreverent sense of humor.'
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