Jewelry Study Day: Material and Technique in Contemporary Art Jewelry Design
Saturday September 12, 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Featuring renowned jewelry artists and metalsmiths Ed Brickman, Robert Ebendorf, Thomas Gentille, Susan Kingsley from Ethical Metalsmiths, Tamiko Kawata, Daniella Kerner, Miriam Mirna Korolkovas, Linda MacNeil, Robert Lee Morris, Emiko Oye, and Jiří Šibor.
Join us for a day to explore the materials, techniques and artistic expressions that are making contemporary jewelry one of today’s most exciting art forms. We will be looking at the expanded range of materials and techniques jewelers use to convey their concepts including recycled and found objects, high-tech materials used in computer-generated jewelry, and ethically-sourced metals and gemstones. This study day includes a class in silver forging, demonstrations in MAD’s Open Studios, a tour of the GlassWear exhibition with curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman, and culminates in a panel discussion with some of the most innovative and celebrated studio jewelers working today.
10:00 am – 1:00 pm:
Silver forging jewelry class with Ed Brickman. Class participants will craft their own silver earrings and learn how to create silver jewelry without the application of heat. Tickets are $60 general / $54 members, and can be purchased here or by calling (212) 299-7780. SOLD OUT!
11:00 am – 1:00 pm:
Open Studio demonstrations with Tamiko Kawata and Miriam Mirna Korolkovas. These two artists will demonstrate their techniques and speak about how they conceive of creating jewelry using non-traditional materials. Ms. Kawata will work with safety pins, and Ms. Korolkovas will use natural materials, including wood and seeds native to Brazil.
11:30 am -12:30 pm:
Screenings of the short documentary Radical Jewelry Makeover: A travelling community mining and recycling project. A film directed and produced by Sarah Zentz and Dana Richardson. The Radical Jewelry Makeover is a project of the Ethical Metalsmiths.
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm:
Tour of GlassWear exhibition led by curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman, with commentary by GlassWear artists Thomas Gentille, Linda MacNeil, Jiří Šibor , and Emiko Oye. This tour will offer the perspectives of both curator and artists on the concepts, creation and selection of the objects in GlassWear.
3:00 pm- 4:30 pm:
Panel discussion moderated by contemporary jewelry curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman, featuring presentations by Robert Ebendorf, Robert Lee Morris, Daniella Kerner, and Susan Kingsley from Ethical Metalsmiths. This panel brings together prominent figures in the world of contemporary studio jewelry to discuss their unique approaches to materials and techniques in their work within the context of their distinguished careers
Jewelry Study Day is supported, in part, through the generous contribution of the
About the Participants:
Ed Brickman
Ed Brickman was born in New York City in 1925, and began his jewelry-making career at the age of sixteen. In 1952, after having spent some time working for a professional jeweler, Mr. Brickman started a business importing and distributing nuts, bolts and screws, eventually growing this enterprise into a global operation. Throughout his career, he continued to create jewelry and refine the art of forged metal jewelry. At present, Mr. Brickman devotes much of his time to making new, unique pieces and to teaching the art of jewelry making.
Ed Brickman’s work can be seen in the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York and at the Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey, amongst others. During Mr. Brickman’s long career, he has given workshops for the Florida Society of Goldsmiths and has taught at The Longboat Key Art Center. Mr. Brickman is now teaching at the well-known Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida.
Robert Ebendorf
Robert Ebendorf has been a leading metalsmith and jeweler in the American studio jewelry movement since the 1960’s. In 1969 in his first solo exhibition he established himself as an innovative jeweler, abandoning gemstones and precious metals for alternative materials. Today, Ebendorf is one of America’s premier jewelry artists, celebrated for his use of found objects and imaginative combinations of disparate materials.
Born in Kansas in 1938, Ebendorf served in WWII and then received both a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from the University of Kansas. Through earning both a Fulbright Grant and then later a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant he spent several years in the 1960’s working in Norway.
Ebendorf has been an influential professor for over forty years at institutions including Stetson University, SUNY New Paltz, University of Georgia, and Penland School. He is currently serving as the Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor at East Carolina University, School of Art, in Greenville, North Carolina, while completing a three-year, simultaneous appointment at the University of West England's Bristol School of Art, Media and Design.
A retrospective of forty years of Ebendorf’s work was organized by the Gallery of Art & Design, North Carolina State University in Raleigh and was exhibited at several museums including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in the fall of 2003. His work is represented in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, N.C; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Ebendorf was a founding member of The Society of North American Goldsmiths and has been inducted into the National Metalsmiths Hall of Fame. The Museum of Arts and Design owns several brooches and necklaces of Robert Ebendorf and his work is represented in the current GlassWear exhibition.
Thomas Gentille
Recognized internationally for a lifetime of contributions to the field of art jewelry, Thomas Gentille was the first American artist to be designated by the distinguished Munich-based annual art jewelry fair, Schmuck, a Modern Master (Klassiker der Moderne).
Over a career spanning nearly fifty years, Gentille has continually invented new processes to manipulate a wide range of materials. Many of his explorations have been with materials rarely used for jewelry, including wood, aluminum, acrylic, new synthetic materials, and eggshell inlay. His work often juxtaposes unexpected combinations—such as pumice stone and pure pigment, silk thread and ebony, acrylic and model aircraft plywood—and is noted for its subtle colors, sophisticated surface treatments, and balanced compositions.
Born in Mansfield, Ohio, in 1936, Gentille graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1958. He has instructed students and advanced jewelry makers at leading centers and schools for craft and art throughout the United States and abroad. His book, Step by Step Jewelry, published in 1968, has become a key reference book for jewelry makers. At Schmuck 2001 Gentille became the second American to receive the Herbert Hoffmann prize; he also received the Bavarian State Prize in 2004. His work is in the permanent collections of Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Two of Gentille’s pieces are on view now in the Museum’s GlassWear exhibition.
Tamiko Kawata
Born in Kobe, Japan, Tamiko Kawata received her B.A. in sculpture and craft design from the Tokyo University of Education ( Tsukuba University). Moving to New York in 1962, about a dozen years later Tamiko’s life and artistic vision changed dramatically after a shopping trip to a Woolworth’s store to purchase some safety pins. Fascinated by their design, size and color variety, and attractiveness in bunches, Tamiko (who goes by her first name only in the design world) began to use this utilitarian object to create free-standing sculptures, wall reliefs, and experimental jewelry. The complex patterning she achieves crosses borders from metal art to textile art, and her concentration on a precisely engineered structure melds architecture with sculpture and jewelry. Tamiko does not use any type of adhesive or form of attachment, so that the inherent properties of the safety pins, such as weight and tension, become the primary structural characteristics of the larger piece.
Tamiko’s jewelry and sculpture have been shown in many exhibitions in California, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and Japan. She had been awarded numerous grants and residencies, including the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, the Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant, the Louise Bourgeois Residency Award for a Sculptor, and the Millay Colony for the Arts Grant. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in Cazenovia, New York; the LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton, New York; and the private Lloyd Cotsen Collection, and her safety pin necklace entitled Black Orpheus Fabricated is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.
Daniella Kerner
Daniella Kerner was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel in1952. She received her B.F.A. at Sir George Williams University in Montreal and then earned her M.F.A. at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University where she now teaches. Ms. Kerner is one of the major figures in the development and use of computer design and manufacture (CAD/CAM) in jewelry-making. Of her work, she states: “By designing objects that are rooted in historical tradition, I am able to explore narrative and historical references, and symbolism in a way that I cannot when designing ordinary objects. The technologies that I am involved in such as electroforming, vapor deposition, casting of acrylic, and the use of the computer as a design and manufacturing tool, enable me to create visual imagery that is contemporary and unique.”
Ms. Kerner has received numerous awards for her jewelry design, including the Johnson Matthey Platinum Jewelry Design Competition and the Sterling Silver Design Competition of the Sterling Silversmiths Guild of America. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Australia, Canada, England, Finland, and across the United States.
Ms. Kerner’s piece entitled Mag-Brooch is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Arts and Design. Two collaborative CAD/CAM work with her husband Stanley Lechtzin are in the GlassWear exhibition.
Susan Kingsley
A jeweler and metalsmith, Susan Kingsley collaborated in 2004 with colleague Christina Tatiana Miller to found Ethical Metalsmiths, an organization devoted to effectuating change in the areas of environmental degradation and human rights violations that are a too common result of irresponsible metals and gemstone mining worldwide. In an industry often under-regulated by government, Ethical Metalsmith seeks to raise awareness among jewelers, metalsmiths, teachers, suppliers, retailers, and consumers about the human and environmental costs of mining. In particular the mission focuses on metalsmiths and jewelers adapting their practices and become advocates for environmentally responsible mining.
As an artist and metalsmith Ms. Kingsley is interested in creating jewelry, objects and installations that embody and reflect both social and cultural values. Ms. Kingsley received her B.A. from the College of Wooster in Ohio and an M.F.A. in visual arts from Vermont College in Montpelier. Her work has been exhibited, collected and published internationally, and she is the recipient of an NEA/Western States Arts Federation fellowship. Ms. Kingsley is a member of the Society of North American Goldsmiths and has lectured and taught throughout the U.S. and Canada. In addition to studio work, Ms. Kingsley has written extensively about art, craft, feminist issues and the “paradox of gold”.
Miriam Mirna Korolkovas
Miriam Mirna Korolkovas was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of Sao Paulo, and her M.F.A. in Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in New York, and her Ph.D. in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of Sao Paulo. Ms. Korolkovas has been awarded numerous research and academic honors, including a Fulbright scholarship, a GOLDEN Prize at Idea Brasil, and most recently a Fulbright/CAPES Scholarship as Senior Visiting Research Professor at the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. Ms. Korolkovas has taught at the Santa Marcelina College, Oswaldo Cruz College of Industrial Design, and Paulista University’s College of Architecture and Urban Planning, all in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her work in industrial design has been featured in exhibitions throughout Brazil, as well as in Germany, Italy, Sweden and Macedonia, and at the Saint Etienne Design Biennial in France.
Ms. Korolkovas works as an architect, urbanist, industrial designer, sculptor, and jeweler. Her work in jewelry, which she says greatly benefited from her architectural and urban design background, is fabricated from metals and wood, as well as seeds and stones.
Linda MacNeil
A native of New Hampshire, Linda MacNeil began making jewelry as a child and studied at the Philadelphia College of Art, the Massachusetts College of Art, and the Rhode Island School of Design, where she received her B.F.A. in 1976.
Ms. MacNeil’s jewelry is characterized by its concentration on crisp and minimal geometric forms and a wide palette of colors. Her work recalls the elegance and bold, clean lines of the Art Deco period and is most often executed in glass and pâte-de-verre with either gold or plated brass.
Ms. MacNeil has been a guest artist at numerous arts and design institutions, including the Rhode Island School of Design and the Miasa Center and Niijima Glass Center in Japan. She has been the recipient of prestigious awards for her jewelry design, including the Massachusetts Council on the Arts Fellowship in 1981, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1985, the Art of Liberty Award from the National Liberty Museum in 2001, and the Excellence in Jewelry Metalwork award from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2001.
Her jewelry is in the permanent collections of several museums, among them the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Several of Ms. MacNeil’s necklaces are included in the Museum’s current GlassWear exhibition.
Robert Lee Morris
Born in Germany in1947 and raised all over the world, as the child of an Armed Services family, Robert Lee Morris graduated from Beloit College in Wisconsin in 1969 with a degree in art. After joining an artists’ commune in Wisconsin and starting to design, he began what has become a legendary career in the world of jewelry. After his work was discovered by a NYC gallery owner in 1971, Mr. Morris moved to New York City, first opening a shop on the Upper East Side and then in 1974 a Soho jewelry gallery, the first of its kind in the city. Several years later his store Artwear was created, showcasing both his own work as well as that of many other art jewelers, giving many prominent jewelers’ work its first exposure to the public.
Sculptural, smooth and sensual shapes define Robert Lee Morris’ work. Matte and patina finishes on fluid forms often reminiscent of nature define his very recognizable and influential style.
Mr. Morris is one of the widely-acknowledged leaders of the art jewelry movement, and has successfully embraced both the art-as-craft and art-as-fashion aesthetic in his work. Fashion designer Donna Karan has said of him, “Robert was the first to create art for the body. There’s a biodynamic, elemental quality to his work. He understands the innate beauty behind raw and primitive arts.”
In addition to his longstanding, close collaboration with Donna Karan, Mr. Morris has designed jewelry for other high-profile fashion designers such as Geoffrey Beene, Karl Lagerfeld, Anne Klein, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, and Kansai Yamamoto. Morris has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards for his jewelry design, including the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, two CFDA awards for accessory design in 1985 and 1994, and the Coty Award in 1981 for his work with Calvin Klein.
Mr. Morris was honored with a 25-year retrospective of his work at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, in 1995. His works are in the collections of many museums worldwide, including the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.
Emiko Oye
Emiko Oye was born in Parma, Ohio in 1974 and received a B.F.A. from Syracuse University in 1997. Based in San Francisco for the last ten years, Oye creates both jewelry and sculpture most often from recycled material that may be combined with precious stones and metals. Recent jewelry has incorporated elements as far-ranging as delicate yet elegant salvaged glass medical vials to familiar chunky plastic toy parts, prompting a new look at everyday objects elevated to new aesthetic uses.
Oye’s work has been illustrated in dozens of books and periodicals and she has led many workshops throughout the U.S. championing the transformation of recycled parts.
Oye offers a thought provoking insight into her métier: “As designers, our work is often pigeonholed into one of three categories: fashion, craft, or art. Rare to find the example of work that is accepted into all three realms, even though the boundaries between the three are becoming blurred. Who determines the criteria, sets the standards for these titles— Museums, Consumers, Artists, or more likely, the Marketplace? In truth, design blends across multiple realms. Do not most craftspeople consider their work an art? Is not art often seen as “in fashion”, and cannot fashion be regarded as a ‘craft’?”
Oye’s piece Craft Tiara from the“in the red: fashion*craft*art” series is included in the museum’s GlassWear exhibition.
Jiří Šibor
Jiří Šibor was born in 1966 in Brno, Czech Republic and studied at the Technical and Professional School in Metalworking in Kurim, Czech Republic. Mr. Sibor has been featured in exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally in many group exhibitions; he has been featured in solo shows in galleries in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, and the Netherlands. In addition to having pieces in many important museums in the Czech Republic his work may be found in the U.S. in the permanent collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, New York.
About his work, Mr. Šibor says "To me, art jewelry means 'anything' that by virtue of its size or the manner of its contact respects the proportions of the human body; made of 'any' material, the morphology of which is an expression of the artist's individual, even original, approach. Its value rests in its ability to transmit visual as well as textural properties to the perception of the viewer or the person wearing it.”
Jewelry Study Day is supported, in part, through the generous contribution of World Gold Council.
For more information, please call 212.299.7780.