Dear Ornament Reader,

An unsettling, socially and politically traumatic 2003 continues halfway through its journey to the year end. The forces of change that pulsed through the twentieth century seem to be gathering even greater force during these early years of the twenty-first century. We have experienced an explosion of information and inventions, with no one left untouched by them and nothing remaining the same. It is the primal wheel of life turning, continuing its evolution. One would think that happily we now have the perspective and the ability to watch it do so, instructed and challenged by the knowledge that other centuries and other times did not have available to them. But laden by multiple views and multiple truths, our newly found perspective has bound us like Gulliver, contrarily pinned to a world that leaves little opportunity for true cosmic insight and enlightenment, or a bit of visionary consciousness.

Yet our world still manages to nourish itself through artistic expressiveness, valuing the artist’s search for a purity and truthfulness intrinsic to the form the art object takes. The brilliant Andy Goldsworthy—whose environmental art is intimately tied to nature, in which each work is a tribute to and a culmination of life’s ever present cycling of the process of birth, growth, decay and death—is a sublime example of perfect, absolute truth in one’s work. “I have become aware of how nature is in a state of change,” he says, “and how that change is the key to understanding.” That awareness of the transitional, temporal, transformative energy of living, of simply being, helps connect us with our essential selves. Our artists persist through pacific and tumultuous times, as they forever contemplate and embrace shapes and forms, creating objects of integrity and beauty, balancing substance and spirit, linking their materiality to our ever questing hearts.

This particularly inspiring issue of Ornament shows how artists through their works of personal adornment freely range through their own imaginative territories, exploring new forms, looking for new modes of expression, and for new ideas in the development and enrichment of their artforms. These artists also continue to plunge deeply into the recurring themes of their repertoire, built over years or decades of work, delving into aspects of a bold statement or a subtle nuance with a steady, sure focus that will consequently change their work. And quite wonderfully, an evolution will have taken place. And with it the wheel of life will turn some more, breathing positive energy into our worldview, giving us a little better perspective, a little more latitude and longitude by which to keep our bearings secure through this fiercely grand experiment taking place on Mother Earth.