|
 Drawn
from the 2007 Curated Exhibition in Print, published in Metalsmith,
Framing: The Art of Jewelry looks at art jewelry in the Museum of Contemporary
Craft, Portland, Oregon. Art jewelry is more “one-off” than
production-oriented, more artistic than traditional. Art jewelry may
be constructed with precious materials (gold, silver, gems) but also
includes sticks and stones, plastic waste, cracked glass, human hair,
as well as other “re-purposed” materials—images from
old prints, typewriter keys, bottle caps, and cookie tins. It can be
enameled, resined, painted, and coated with any of a number of substances.
Art jewelry may in fact be non-wearable or defined as “miniature
sculpture for the body.”
It is just that aspect of jewelry as miniature sculpture or graphic
design that has drawn the eye of curator Ellen Lupton. She is the director
of the Graphic Design graduate program at Maryland Institute College
of Art in Baltimore,  where
she also serves as director of the Center for Design Thinking, and is
curator of contemporary design at the Cooper-Hewitt. Many of the choices
Lupton made were clearly because the pieces tickle her eye, not her
jewelry-wearer persona. Her favorite in the show, and significantly
the only one she chooses to wear (and own), is a simple pair of earrings,
a quick graphic scribble in gold wire by Betty Cooke, bent like a paper
clip during a tedious business meeting.
There are many beautiful pieces, including Melanie Bilenker’s
tiny brooches in ivory from piano keys, resin and hair, used to create
images. Kiff Slemmons’s work and that of Roberta and David Williamson
delight with their images encased beneath glass lenses, all beautifully
finished. Harriete Estel Berman’s Bronze Identity Bead Necklace
is a dazzling tour de force of recycled materials: simple colored plexiglas
disks, black polymer beads, and domed and sawtooth-edged rounds of tin-can
metal attached with large tubular rivets to either side of the disks.
Diane Falkenhagen’s exquisitely-rendered Rococo Landscape mystifies
and lures with its image of a world long gone.
The exhibition is loaded with pieces covered in previous issues of Metalsmith,
which is to say, heavy on the odd. Rings that rise several inches into
the air, found plastic objects entombed in resin and ash sand, odd bits
and pieces of junk glopped together with glue. Numerous brooches have
sharp, fabric-snagging edges. Some are so large as to defy practicality.
Often it seemed the artists were simply working in mixed-media sculptures
and put a pinback on their work and termed it a brooch. The rings, bracelets
and necklaces at least relate comfortably to the human body; many of
the brooches do not.
Jewelry that is too large or sharp prompts caution in the wearer, who
must adapt herself to an artwork and its boundaries. While many people
would not bother, for some, the challenge of wearing—and exhibiting—such
aggressive jewelry is relished. Ultimately, an interesting (if dangerous)
piece of jewelry encourages dialogue with other people about what one
is wearing—which may be the wearer’s intent.
My first impression on viewing the show was that the exhibition was
about framed jewelry—jewelry that in some fashion had a boundary
around it. Through reading the Exhibition in Print in Metalsmith (which
pages are attached to the walls of the Museum for viewers to read and
thus comprehend the show), one realizes the curator’s point is
that the showing of new and startling work frames the dialogue about
modern jewelry and opens new topics for discussion, and that jewelry
itself acts as a frame for the body—earrings and necklaces frame
the face, bracelets frame the hands, for instance.
By taking the exhibition off the page and putting it into a museum context,
one re-frames the discussion of jewelrymaking, taking it from a two-dimensional
and placing it into a three-dimensional format. What remains missing,
though, is a feel for how jewelry and the body relate to each other,
hence MoCC’s sister exhibition upstairs called Touching Warms
the Art.
Following Rebecca Scheer’s challenge to studio artists in Metalsmith
in 2006 to make non-precious works that viewers could handle, MoCC sent
out a call for entries. They asked that artists make pieces that could
be touched, possibly by thousands, and which used non-precious materials,
challenging notions of what jewelry should be. Sixty-seven artists from
twelve countries were selected out of one hundred forty-five entries.
Ninety-nine objects are laid out for examination. There are mirrors
so people can see how the pieces look when worn, and a photo kiosk which
allows them to pose before a camera and take their own picture wearing
the jewelry. These pictures end up on a Flickr website, reached via
the Museum’s site. The grid wall behind the posted images represents
those sent by the artists and illustrates how they may have  intended
their work to be worn, although visitors are encouraged to put their
own spin on them. Viewers become participants in the art when they can
try-on pieces and see the results. The try-on area is much more interactive
and lively. People talk to each other and discuss what they are looking
at, unlike the reverent silence more common in the viewing-only area
downstairs. An Art Bar furthers the experience by supplying visitors
with raw materials with which to make their own “art” jewelry.
In many ways, this exhibition—both In Print and at the Museum
—raises more questions than it answers. Some of these questions
include “how wearable should jewelry be?” and “what
is jewelry and how does it relate to the body?” In the current
“anything goes” world of design and creation, is what we
are seeing “fresh creativity” or simply anarchy? Given the
DIY (do it yourself) crafts world taking root on the internet, and the
democratization of knowledge, materials and tools that have been growing
over the last thirty years, it is clear that this is not a discussion
from which one can expect settled answers for years yet to come.
Framing:
The Art of Jewelry, curated by Ellen Lupton, runs through May
11, 2008; Touching Warms the Art, curated by Rebecca
Scheer, Rachelle Thiewes and Namita Gupta Wiggers, runs through March
23, 2008. The Museum of Contemporary Craft is located at 724 N.W. Davis
Street, Portland, Oregon; www.MuseumofContemporaryCraft.org.
|
