Barbara’s ongoing commitment to conveying her knowledge of technical, traditional and experimental enameling techniques in combination with appropriate and necessary metalworking for jewelry is evident in her innovative and researched teaching. “I believe that in depth visual and technical investigation along with experimentation provides increased expertise, continual discovery and aesthetic development.”
Read MoreThe motifs that I most often use in my artwork are derived from natural plant forms through stylized drawing of the bird’s eye view of a flower. I believe, when plainness and symmetry of the motif combines with textured and colored metal, it creates objects that connect history to modern day.
Read MoreWhile still referencing my interest in industrial remnants, these works, created in 2020 are a fresh view and exploration with an emphasis on color. I am always seeking a way to invoke a sense of industrial history through form and material but have chosen to soften the edges with a whispery palette of pastels and sensual surfaces. I use liquid enamels over copper and various mark making techniques to achieve the graphic surface designs. My work references African Mali beadwork and Aboriginal repetitive mark making as a way to place emphasis and pay homage to the enslaved, marginalized and indigenous peoples who have contributed to the rich and vibrant African American craft culture of today.
Read MoreMy work is greatly informed by my surroundings. I seek out texture and pattern in the natural and man made environments in which I find myself, and these elements inform my work. Finding their way into pieces directly or abstracted. I intend for the viewer to glimpse just enough to trigger their own memory and enact a sense of nostalgia or familiarity. I continuously flow between jewelry, vessels, sculpture and drawing with each process informing the others.
Read MoreHarlan W. Butt is Professor Emeritus at the University of North Texas. His work is represented in the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Smithsonian Institute, the Museum of Art & Design, the National Gallery of Australia and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Read MoreI have taken a series of photos of the institutional buildings of a former mental asylum Grangegorman, Dublin, and transformed them through enamels into a small series of brooches, trying to convey the images of the building on a brick framework. I want to capture the fragile nature of the buildings before they were demolished or rebuilt. The decaying and unstable buildings were comparable to the crumbling minds of its former patents.
Read MoreFor several years, she searched for a link between jewelry and graphic design and thanks to enamel, she found this link. She can paint with the powders, the colors, the transparencies with a technique she learned in Idar-Oberstein (Germany). In the beginning, she searched for the boundary between art and kitsch. By combining several materials (raw stones, wood, silver…), she retrieved the balance.
Read MoreNature, as main source of inspiration of all the pieces, offers a wide variety of shapes, from fluid ones to rigid, straight ones. Spring, out of all seasons, provides a variety of colors and shapes both in the vegetal world and in the world of insects.
Read MoreLooking back, everything I did before attending the Assamblage School of Contemporary Jewelry courses, were but quests for meaning. I started making jewelry in a very monotonous period of my life, when I was no longer finding my bearings and exhilaration whatsoever. I was in need of a creative offline activity and jewelry-making came to light as the only way that made me feel really good.
Read MoreThis creative road I’ve taken started from a pure passion to create. I enjoy spending time in my workshop focusing on different things, learning new techniques and inventing new ways of doing the same thing, but much easier and faster. My inspiration comes from the beauty and simplicity of nature. What drives me is the tendency to translate this admiration into a visual language, to illustrate the connection with something bigger, that operates according to the same principles and breathes in the same way.
Read MoreWorking with jewelry was not love at first sight, but we got along since I had been managing a small jewelry business. My true passion has been art and civilization history, and I studied Art History, at UNArte Bucharest. Art History won me over, but daily contact with jewellery made me pay more attention to the meaning, origins and aesthetics of wearable ornaments. This is how I began a new story, the story of my jewelry collection.
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