New Commission!

I was recently asked to create a set of 5 necklaces for a woman to give as gifts to the bridesmaids in her wedding.

I decided to abstract the couple's names and use that as the direct source for the designs of each necklace. Once the individual necklaces are put back together, the text becomes legible again... reading 'Jon and Alicia.'

I'm obscenely pleased with how the pieces came out, and might do this again someday. Here's hoping that the couple getting married actually like the idea as well!

The New Materiality at the Fuller Museum of Craft

A review in last Sunday's providence journal sparked my interest in the Fuller Museum of Crafts current exhibition, The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft. The show presents work that, although made by traditional craft artists, embraces technology as a emotive material. The combination of these two disparate methodologies creates an technology are getting more and more irrelevant.

I'm really interested to check out this show... especially because one of the artists included in New Materiality is the San Francisco based design duo, Mike & Maaike. Mike and Maaike will be showing pieces from their Stolen Jewels line of work... interesting platform to discuss the role that technology can play in today's contemporary craft world. Traditional boundaries between art, craft, and which is one of my favorites! They will also be participating in the show that I am co-curating this fall, Chromophilia... so, New Materiality will be a good chance to sneak-peek their work before Chromophilia opens.

New Materiality is up through February 6th, 2011 at the Fuller Museum of Craft... check out more info here.

Images: top: 3-D Chair, by Brian Boldon, digital glass decals, float glass, epoxy and aluminum. Bottom: Stolen Jewels #7, Mike and Maaike, leather.

Take my breath away...

I was in the middle of giving a soldering demo during tonight's CE class at RISD, when I was so distracted that I had to stop teaching all together. The culprit: this amazing Scottish stone necklace that one of my students was wearing.

It's just stunning, and the images really don't do the piece justice. The clasp is an amazing little box clasp, and each different piece of agate is separated by faceted citrine set in a decorative bezel. Really, the attention to detail is quite impressive.

Most of the stones found in Scottish stone jewelry were mined in the Cairngorm Mountains. Lots of smoky quartz, yellow quartz, and various warm, pale shades of quartz came from this range. The agates, carnelians, and other stones are mostly indigenous also.

Rena Abeles is the lucky owner of this beautiful piece of history. She is also the proud owner of Reliable Gold Ltd in Providence. Reliable Gold is an estate jewelry shop over in Wayland Square, which has been in her family since the 1930's. I can't wait to see what's in stock in the store, especially considering that Rena is always wearing the most exquisite pieces to class!