Greetings! 

Toni Greenbaum

The SOFA New York fair was wonderful, and the AJF tour of participating member galleries led by Damian Skinner and Toni Greenbaum was very successful, with 25 people attending. Damian and Toni spoke about specific pieces of jewelry that caught their attention, and the often-enthusiastic discussion that took place was a good reminder of the many different ways to think about contemporary jewelry. It was an excellent outing. This was followed by an extremely well attended talk given by Jeannine Falino, curator at MAD, which was co-sponsored by SNAG and AJF. Look for a version of this talk on the AJF website in the next couple of months. 

The audience @ SOFA

News that might be of interest to AJF members includes: 

• Namita Wiggers, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland is looking for specific jewelry donations to add to their collection and to celebrate their 75th anniversary. They are looking for specific works by the following jewelers:

Anya Kivarkis

Mary Lee Hu

Damian Skinner

Myra Mimlitsch-Gray

Ruth Pennington

Kiff Slemmons

Nancy Worden

 

If you have work by these or other artists that you would like to donate, you should immediately contact Namita Wiggers at 971-255-5519 or nwiggers@pnca.edu. They have a deadline of 15 May to include the piece in an exhibition (and catalog) that opens at the end of July 2011. So you had better hurry. Contributions are tax-deductible

• If any of you are planning to go to the Basel art fair in mid-June please look out for

  Jeannine Falino

  Ornamentum, our member gallery at Design Basel. It is quite an accomplishment for this American-based jewelry gallery to be included in this super prestigious fair.

Late May will find us at the SNAG conference in Seattle. We have been preparing for this event for months and will be presenting our first exhibit called Geography, along with our first catalog. Those of you who have signed up for the trip will enjoy a packed itinerary of studio visits, talks, and dinners with writers and jewelers. I hope to see many of you there.

 

 

All the best,

Susan Cummins
AJF Chair

THE MYSTERY OF CONTEMPORARY JEWELRY IN INDIA 

by Kevin Murray
India makes a convincing claim to be the centre of global jewelry. Last year the international gold market was sustained by the annual marriage season in India, featuring 10 million weddings crowned in gold. Not only the world's largest consumer of bullion, the subcontinent also has the largest diamond cutting and polishing centre in the world. Click to read more.

by Benjamin Lignel
'Ecstasy is represented by two sensuous flowers. Having popped a pill they are utterly uninhibited and expose themselves, sweaty from sexual exertions.' So begins the highly evocative description of Extasium Ethero Coïtus, one of ten pieces of jewelry showcased by the Gagosian gallery in its recently opened Paris space. Click to read more.

by Anthony Tammaro
On a terrible winter day in New York City, with snow pilled up on sidewalks and narrow paths cutting through canyons of grey slushy muck, I made my way to the Museum of Arts and Design. On view was the exhibition Think Again: New Latin American Jewelry. Click to read more.

by Ricardo 'Nano' Pulgar and Carolina Gimeno
Chile is a land of earthquakes, but it isn't just a case of the earth moving. In November the tectonic plates of the emerging scene of contemporary Chilean jewelry moved to unexpected places in this part of the globe. The catalyst? Ruudt Peters came to openly share his particular way of understanding contemporary jewelry. Click to read more.

by Damian Skinner
Hoping to get some idea of the ramifications of fine art's turn to the handmade, I started reading Shu Hung and Joseph Magliaro's By Hand: The Use of Craft in Contemporary Art, published by Princeton University Press in 2007. Click to read more.

NOTES ON SOFA NY
by Damian Skinner

The Park Avenue Armory is much as the name suggests: a building completed in 1881 for the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard. The fair is held in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, a huge space of about 200 by 300 feet with a barrel vaulted roof spanned by eleven wrought iron arches. Click to read more.

 

The Van Cleef & Arpels exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in New York City is panned by a critic who finds an ethical conundrum and poor display taste amidst all the sparkle and glitter. (To read the review, click here)

 

Ethical Metalsmiths are holding another Radical Jewelry Makeover in Santa Fe in October 2011, and they are looking for funding to support the project. If you are interested in becoming a benefactor, click here.  And if you want to find out more about Radical Jewelry Makeover, or Ethical Metalsmiths, you can visit their website by clicking here. 

 

Past, Present and Future: 40 Years of Electrum opened at Electrum Gallery in London on 21 April 2011, and will be celebrating the gallery's history as a pioneering space supporting the New Jewelry in the 1970s and 1980s. Jewelers on show include the crème of British contemporary jewelry, including Caroline Broadhead, Pierre Degen, Gerda Flockinger, Susanna Heron, Wendy Ramshaw and David Watkins. (To learn more, visit the gallery's website by clicking here.)

 

Craft Australia have published a series of articles on their website, exploring the issue of sustainability in relation to jewelry and metalsmithing. (To find out more, click here to visit their website.)

 

The Craft Research Fund organized by the Centre for Craft Creativity and Design has advertised for applications to the 2011 round of the Craft Research Fund. The deadline is 1 July 2011, and you can find out more about the criteria, guidelines and application process by clicking here. 

 

If you are interested in spending some time in Amsterdam, you should check out 'The artist in residence' and 'The room', two accommodation options being offered by Dutch jeweler Rian de Jong. (To find out more, click here and here.)

 

The 7th Cheongju International Craft Biennale and associated craft competition is calling for entries on the theme of 'Not the new, just the necessary'. The deadline is 8 June 2011. To find out more about the biennale, including how to submit your work, visit the website by clicking here. 

 

Something you don't see everyday - contemporary jewelry makes it to You Tube. (To watch the clip, click here.  And to turn it into a drinking game, take a swig every time you see a member of AJF.)

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