order

I'm intrigued by the various ways in which Allyson Gee displays butterflies. The geometric forms that mimic a standard display case really play off of the abstract patterns that are featured on each pair of symmetrical wings.

preservation

Sometimes I wish I could capture entire moments, with all five senses intact. I would especially like to remember how (naïvely?) optimistic I was about moving here. I need that wide-eyed feeling again! Anika Smulovitz interprets this "human desire to label and collect all aspects of our surroundings" through her herbarium specimen rings that encase an element of nature in glass to preserve its qualities... though the feeling is short lived. I guess I'm better off with present moments, anyway. Time for me to move on forward!

Oh, and this won't be the last time I'm posting the work of the talented Anika Smulovitz -- she executes her thought-provoking concepts extremely well!

aliyah gold

Boa Constructed and Defense Mechanism from her MFA Thesis for SUNY New Paltz Graduate Metal program

via AJF

tied up

Just spent about an hour going through the old posts of a favorite tumblr of mine, ՇᏂᏋ אᏫՊᎪᎠᏐᏣ ᎦᏌՌ ◉. And I have come to the conclusion that I MUST find a hammock this summer to nap in.

pal kepenyes

1,2

i'll be back in two ticks

1, 2, 3 via Aaron Faber Gallery

shovel

Paul McCobb chair, circa 1950's

fifth of july

It's not too late for this, right?

P.S. This is NOT me.

vested

1, 2

otto

I got a jewelry buzz when I saw the first necklace pictured below on Anica Boutique's blog. A little Googling later, and I was clicking through Otto's acrylic necklaces, which are designed by New York based Roula Nassar. I love getting jewelry highs.

david watkins

The issues of scale, colour, placement on the body (and off the body), conditions for jewellery as sculpture, jewellery as object of contemplation, the body as site-specific location, notions of jewellery’s wearability and boundaries were germane to artists at the time and were all very much to the fore in Watkin’s work.

He began his career as a jazz pianist and sculptor, and his practice and understanding of these two disciplines reverberate throughout his work, bringing to it unexpected directions and innovations. At a formative moment in the 1960s Watkins had worked on special effects for Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, the film 2001, designing and creating model spacecraft to high levels of demand and precision.

via VADS and Victoria and Albert Museum

susanna heron

De-centering the wearer of ‘normal’ jewellery; playing with the theatrical, voyeuristic and narcissistic nature of social bodies; producing wearables and photographables rather than objects of the goldsmith’s art and asking questions - not giving answers - were some of the notions being explored through the medium of jewellery...

via VADS and Susanna Heron

trio

With New Work Pierre Degen had put together a provocative exhibition of brilliant work which, by virtue of his having been known as a jewellery maker, was considered a jewellery exhibition. Everything could after all, be ‘worn’ or at least attached to a body. And it did focus concern upon issues of the body and the delimiting of received notions of ‘jewellery’. Consisting of witty, provocative and fun assemblages of sticks, ladders, ready-mades, over-size balloons for ‘wearing’, and pieces like "Large Silk Propeller", "Tourniquet", "Coffee Bag and Stick", "Personal Environments" and "Large Loop" he investigated in one sustained effort the pressing question being asked at the time by advanced jewellery thinkers, namely: what are the conditions (minimal or maximal) for an object type known as a piece of jewellery?








This one exhibition (together with The Jewelery Project) was a bridge too far for many in the jewellery community. Indeed, these shows had quite a divisive effect, which was no bad thing with regard to breathing new life into any relatively inert practice.

The convergence of these three exhibitions had an immense impact on thinking jewellers everywhere in the western world (though repercussions were also felt further afield, for example, in Japan). And it was the substantial circulation - not of the actual works themselves, but of their representation in catalogues and photographic images - that effected such international attention and conceptual authority. But the huge reaction to New Jewellery was decidedly mixed – in varying proportions it was revered, enjoyed, supported, understood and seen as a source of great inspiration, if not objects to copy, and on the other hand the reaction was dismissive, hysterical, angry, appalled, disgusted and loathsome.

via VADS