Jantje Fleischhut & The Relationship between Object Components in Jewelry Work

Pink Moon, 2008 Jantje Fleischhut

Contemporary studio jewelers often discuss the intimate relationship between jewelry and the body. Lately I’ve been thinking about how conceptual jewelry sometimes subverts that relationship with jewelry that rests uneasily, awkwardly, or painfully on the body.  More recently I’ve been focusing on the relationship between jewelry objects–how disparate materials suggest an exploration/refutation of cultural values. What, for example, is Jantje Fleischhut communicating through her brooch, Pink Moon?   The very idea of a pink moon, as opposed to the greyish-white moon of our physical reality, suggests a playful, childlike, alternate reality where whimsy and imagination rather than empirical knowledge is the driving force of rationality.  Fleishchhut’s juxtaposition of “low” value  industrial materials and “high” value precious materials suggests an interrogation of binary values of worth and desirability in a consumerist society. The stag figure represents the relationship between nature and the built environment; while the pastel colors clashing with the earthy brown colors represent the dualistic symbiosis of feminine/masculine and the hierarchical colonial relationship between “civilized” (European) nations and “uncivilized”  (non-European) nations.

When artists such as Fleischhut aptly employ the use of layered meanings through an awareness of material consciousness, with skill and subtlety, they broaden the discourse on the location of jewelry in the contemporary art world and the role of the conceptual jeweler as object maker and commentarian.

Metal Inclinations2 Juried Exhibit

The Society for Midwest Metalsmiths  and Hauser & Miller invite all jewelry artists to enter Metal Inclinations2, an international online juried art exhibition for 2010-11.

METAL Inclinations2 will debut on the Internet October 31, 2010 and the exhibition will remain online a full year until October 31, 2011.

Jurors:

Jamie Bennett, Professor of Art in the Metal Program at the State University at New Paltz

Klaus Bürgel, a jewelry artist who earned an MFA from the Akademie d.B. Künste, in Munich, Germany in 1993. Mr. Bürgel has exhibited internationally and has taught at RISD, the 92nd Street Y, and in numerous jewelry programs.

John Cogswell, jeweler, silversmith, educator and author/illustrator. He currently teaches at SUNY New Paltz, NY

Sydney Lynch, jeweler and entrepreneur

Exhibit Awards:

$2,000 First place award sponsored by the Society for Midwest Metalsmiths.
$1,000 Second place award, sponsored by Hauser and Miller.
$500 Third place award gift certificate, by Rio Grande.
$200 Award of merit gift certificate, by Pasternak Findings.
$100 Three awards of merit gift certificates by Pasternak Findings.

A new informational page has been set up with a downloadable PDF of the prospectus. Go to www.smm-metalinclinations.org/enter

ENTRY DEADLINE: June 30, 2010

Meditations on Art and Craft: 11-16-09

Below are fragments of ideas that are incomplete flashes of my own thoughts, ideas that stood out in books that I read, or unanswered questions. I meditate on these conceptual fragments because I believe they are seeds of thought that will develop into fully formed concepts that will inform my art work in due time.

material consciousness

a common estimate of the time required to master a craft is ten thousand hours

strategic acceptance of ambiguity, rather than an obsessive perfectionism

material culture

what the process of making concrete things reveals to us about ourselves

Craftsmanship, by combining skill, commitment and judgment, establishes a close relationship between head and hand

The art object

Mort Abelson Jewelry Scholarship 2010

Harold O'Connor, Gold Brooch

Scholarship Background
This scholarship contest is sponsored by the Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts in honor of Mort Abelson, who was instrumental in raising the awareness of jewelry design and promoting jewelry designers in the U.S.  Abelson served as President of Jewelers of America from 1975-1977, and was responsible for overseeing the massive JA International Trade Show in New York.  Abelson launched the careers of new artists and designers who have gone on to become leaders in the jewelry field:  David Yurman,  Penny Preville, Alex Sepkus, and many more. Among the list is Alan Revere, who is also one of the country’s preeminent jewelry educators, teaching at the school he founded in 1979. As a designer and also a leader in jewelry training, with a long affiliation with Jewelers of America, Revere’s Academy was selected as the scholarship site.

Contest Prize
The contest winner will receive an all-expenses-paid scholarship from anywhere in the US to San Francisco (air, lodging, tuition and fees) for a master class of their choice during the Academy’s annual International Masters Symposium in April 2010. For three weeks during the Masters Symposium, prominent jewelry artists, designers, craftsman and experts converge on San Francisco to teach professional skills and techniques in the area of their greatest expertise. Marking the Academy’s own thirtieth anniversary, the upcoming event has an impressive celebrity lineup. David Yurman will teach The Complete Designer, Michael Good will teach Anticlastic Raising, Bernd Munsteiner will teach Cutting Included Gems, Kent Raible will teach Granulation, and more.

JURORS
A jury composed of Mort Abelson, Alan Revere, and Cindy Edelstein will select the winner.

ENTRY DEADLINE
December 1, 2009 11:59pm (MST)

Eligibility
The contest is open to anyone in the United States and Canada. Jurors will be looking for an individual whose work exemplifies original, innovative, high quality jewelry design. Submit 5 images of jewelry and 2 short essays of 100 words or less.
Apply
For more information, or to apply, visit the Revere Academy’s website

Searching for Critical Discourse on Jewelry as Art

Today I spent most of my evening searching for scholarly articles on conceptual jewelry and searching for affordable jewelry/metalsmithing classes. So far North Seattle Community College (NSCC) offers a  metalsmithing course for about $100 less than Pratt Fine Art.  But NSCC’s course doesn’t sound as comprehensive as Pratt’s. I’m going to call NSCC and ask them for a more detailed course description. It’s funny how when you’re paying for class with financial aid, you take whatever they offer with no questions asked, but when you’re paying out of your own pocket, you DEMAND to get your money’s worth!

Have you ever wanted something so badly but didn’t know how to describe what you want? That’s what I’ve been going through lately, and it’s extremely frustrating. I feel like I’m stumbling in the dark. I’m reading these really dull, disappointing books on conceptual art. I’ve always hated conceptual art, because I feel it is responsible for the destruction of the art object and all of our historical understanding of what art is. As an artist who makes art objects, you can see how I might have a problem with this. Also the conceptual artists have been charged with eroding aesthetic distinctions, naming them dualistic and binary, and I’m an artist whose inspiration is often found in the interstices of opposing (dualistic) ideas.

Lately, I’ve been interested in embracing the things that I have been resisting. So I wanted to understand conceptual art better. Plus my interest in conceptual art was heightened when

Random Thoughts On: Soap Operas, Trojan Viruses, and Conceptual Art

I never thought my secret addiction to soap operas would land me in a world of trouble, but last night it did. You see, I’m a huge fan of General Hospital (GH). I started watching it as a kid with my grandmother, and now that she’s passed, it’s a nice way for me to remember her by carrying on the tradition of watching. At least that’s what I tell my self so I won’t feel so bad about my guilty pleasure.

Recently, one of my favorite soap actors, Sarah Brown, was written off GH in a way that I found very unsatisfying. I became determined to find out the “real” reason for Brown’s hasty departure. In doing so, I visited a lot of blogs, soap boards, and various sites. In doing so, I inadvertently picked up a Trojan virus that launched several Internet Explorer windows automatically. My antivirus software was unable to delete the virus, so I thought I’d work around the problem by uninstalling Internet Explorer 8. I went to the Microsoft support website, and was able to follow their somewhat arcane instructions. The problem was because of my operating system, I couldn’t really uninstall IE; I could only downgrade from IE8 to IE7. I found it absolutely unreasonable that I couldn’t remove IE using the Add/Remove programs option in the Control Panel. So now I became determined to find a hack that would enable me to uninstall IE.

I visited countless geeky, tech sites and tried dozens of unfruitful fixes. I learned more about my computer (and my dogged determination) than I bargained for. (Like my operating system has no true Administrator super-user account). In the end I was not able to uninstall IE7, but I was able to disable the IE pop-ups by using my anti-virus software to designate IE as an untrusted application. All in all it was an inelegant but successful hack.

And now I return to what I should really be doing: reading Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972.

P.S. Other lesson learned: My antivirus software says Actress Sarah Brown’s website (www.sarahbrown.net/) has a Trojan Clicker virus. I strongly advise you not to visit her website until it is removed. Viruslist.com says the following about Trojan Clicker viruses:

“This family of Trojans redirects victim machines to specified websites or other Internet resources. Clickers either send the necessary commands to the browser or replace system files where standard Internet urls are stored (e.g. the ‘hosts’ file in MS Windows).

Clickers are used:

• To raise the hit-count of a specific site for advertising purposes
• To organize a DoS attack on a specified server or site
• To lead the victim to an infected resource where the machine will be attacked by other malware (viruses or Trojans)”

 

Letter to MORMO, a most uncooperative object

found metal that I plan to use as jewelry

Dear MORMO (mysterious, odd, rusted metal object):

I found you last spring, lying on the side walk, and I immediately connected with you. I felt drawn to your rusty patina and odd shape. I felt I could make a piece of art jewelry from you. It is not odd for me to find an object on the ground and feel that way about it. But I do believe it is odd that you are resisting my attempts to turn you into an art object.

As you know, dear Mormo, some artist’s processes are analytical–they think out their work in advance. They do studies before they commit to doing their final piece. And other artists, such as myself, use a process that is intuitive. They connect to their materials, and follow their inner voice to complete their work. I am trying to connect with you, but you’re acting a bit cagey. I’d appreciate it if you’d cut it out and cooperate with me.

This past weekend, I walked into my studio, and you caught my eye. I picked you up and tried to imagine how you would lie in a finished neck piece. Because, as you well know, the relationship between jewelry and the body is vitally important. I played around with several positions, and when a placed you vertically on my collarbone, I instinctively knew that’s where you belong. Excitedly, I began drilling. And that is where the trouble began. My poor little drill is having difficulty piercing your thickness. I’ve been drilling now for 10 minutes and my drill is hot. And I can tell that I haven’t reached the half-way point. I’m stopping now, but I hope you will be more cooperative tomorrow.

Thank you,

Alexis

2010 Show Schedules

Jack Cunningham, 2008, Fragments brooch

American Craft Council

2010 Show Dates

Public Shows

Baltimore, MD: Feb. 25-28, 2010 **NEW** 4-day show

Atlanta, GA: Mar. 12-14, 2010 (Preview Party: Mar. 11)

St. Paul, MN: Apr. 16-18 , 2010

San Francisco, CA: Aug. 13-15, 2010

Wholesale Show

Baltimore, MD :Feb. 23-24, 2010 **NEW** 2-day show

CraftBoston
Spring Show
Featuring 200 Contemporary Craft Artists
World Trade Center, Boston
April 9-11, 2010

2010 Smithsonian Craft Show
April 21 – 25, 2010

Maria Moreno, 2009, From Bicornios and Minotaurs I neckpiece

Society of North American Goldsmiths

Annual Conference

2010 – Houston, TX, March 10-13
Theme: “going to eXtremes”
Hosted by: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Co-Chairs: Sandie Zilker and Diane Falkenhagen

Sculptural Objects and Functional Art (SOFA) Shows

SOFA New York  – April 16-19, 2010

SOFA West (Santa Fe) – July 8-11, 2010

SOFA Chicago November 5-7, 2010

Letter to Coffee

Dear Coffee,

Health experts disagree about your benefits. I don’t let that sway me. I love everything about you. I love the way your rich, dark brown liquid swirls into my favorite Crate and Barrel mug. That mug is fragile and white; you are so strong and dark. The contrast makes me swoon a little. I love the way delicate drops of oil from the fresh beans I grounded dance across your caliginous surface. I love the way you taste so full-bodied and exotic when I drink you black. And I love your luscious goodness when I add cream and sugar. I love the way you give me a jolt of energy, pulling me from that fuzzy place between sleep and consciousness. I love living in a city where thousands of people feel the same way I do. I really love you coffee.

Random Thoughts On: the Visual Poetics of Conceptual Art Jewelry

I am recovering from a bout of the flu, and today was my first day back at work. It is evening. It’s dark outside. My mind should be quieting down, getting ready to sleep. My body is tired, but my mind is buzzing with activity. So many thoughts are racing through my mind so quickly, I can only get a faint sense of what I am thinking. I am excited, and so very tired.

Where to begin? With book lust: I am perusing amazon.com for more art jewelry books. My Wish List is gigantic. I am visually gorging myself with so many images of interesting jewelry. I am making lists and lists of books that I covet. I fantasize about winning the lottery (although how this would happen is a mystery as I do not play the lottery because I don’t like the odds) and purchasing everything on my Wish List in one fell swoop. Sometimes when a book description is particularly juicy, stimulating, desirous, I will search for it at my public library. If they have it, I will check it out, and if it’s good, I will buy it from Amazon.

Next on to layered thoughts. This morning, on my way downtown, I saw this rather schizophrenic message scribbled on a bus stop. What stood out to me was the phrase “layers of idea”. Immediately it clarified an assortment of fragmented ideas that have been resonating with me: from Bruce Metcalf’s recent article in Metalsmith magazine on CAD/RP and Stanley Lechtzin to F. David Peat’s essay, The Alchemy of Creativity: Art, Consciousness and Embodiment, to my writings on David Bohm in my graduate thesis.