Andrea Shiman
Ayano Ueshima
Daniell Hudson
Danyel Rascoe
David Hardcastle
Eve Singer
Fannie Ip
Freya O’Brien
Judi Powers
Kristi Sword
Leigh Newman
Lucia Perluck
Luciana Toyos Gambarino
Michal Lando
Monica Guerra
Samuel Guillen
Vershali Jain
William Yang
Xilun Wu
Yucen Wavy Tang
Sayumi’s recents work deals with finding a unique balance between real and artificial beauty. Influenced by her urban Japanese upbringing where man-made constructed nature was prevalent, this body of work explores “natural” as a theme both conceptually and physically.
Working with white thermoplastic Sayumi creates pieces that appear delicate to handle but are physically quite strong. Sayumi elevates the plastic out of its original utilitarian context and extends its functionality as a non-traditional jewelry material.
“My five senses are a great part of my process. I find comfort in the excitement that comes when all my senses are connected with the objects I am making, and wish to share these same feelings with others through my objects.
Only through making do I become more aware of the material and my ability to connect with it. By this point in the process, the original form is nearly unrecognizable. I prefer to isolate the material I work with to seek a balance between unexpected natural beauty and artificial beauty. This isolation is not about less, but sometime less is more meaningful. Simplicity becomes a strategic tool for the process of making to comfort my own intrinsic complexities.”
An art jewelry exhibition featuring Ruta Reifen’s Floralforever (pardesim) and Jorge Manillla’s Impossible to imaginecollections. Two unique botanical explorations, abstract and figurative. Both stories of a human’s relationship to their environment, one philosophical and the other a particular narrative. Presented together, as a duet, a dance, these bodies of work employ floral forms as cultural symbols, personal and universal.
Ruta Reifen, born in Jerusalem, Israel, 1984. Received an honors B.Design in Jewelry Design from Shenkar College of Engineering and Design (Israel) 2009. In 2011 she received and honors MFA from the Jewelry + Metals department at the Rhode Island School of Design (United States).
Ruta keeps her own studio practice in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Her fine jewelry sells in selected boutique stores across the US and Europe. Ruta’s practice is based on an expertise of artisanal goldsmith techniques, design skills, and an academic background in jewelry, art history, and contemporary art.
Each piece is individually handmade by the artist in Brooklyn, using responsibly sourced metals and stones, ensuring a commitment to the highest quality craftsmanship as well as minimal environmental impact.
“As a maker, jewelry presents endless opportunities to form intimacy through a wearable piece of art. These jewels are symbols of the splendor and romance I find in flowers, also the most immediate material for self-adornment since ancient times. Floral forms relate directly to the wearer, the exchange between us is personal with every piece I create.”
Jorge Manilla, the son of a family of Mexican goldsmiths and engravers, studied visual arts at the Academy of San Carlos, in Mexico. He received a highly technical jewellery training at the Academy of Craft and Design from the Mexican Institute of Fine Arts. But it was until he moved to Belgium, years later, where he enrolled at the Karel de Grote Academy in Antwerp, that he was forced to forget about the traditional notion he had of jewellery, to let his technical skills aside and to research about the cultural meaning of jewellery, its conceptual possibilities and to experiment with materials and techniques .
Manilla’s vast production, is both utterly beautiful and profoundly upsetting. Attraction, repulsion, uneasiness: his work confronts him with his religious upbringing and the viewer with a powerful and intimate perception of the syncretic religion of the modern Mexico. Allusions to religious images and iconography that show the often tortuous and painful relations that Mexicans have with their faith. Wood, bones, textile, branded leather and silver are amalgamated and transformed into almost recognizable shapes: a probable anatomical part, a series of tiny bundles that could be small babies, an unknown religious utensil. Manilla is not shy to experiment with all kinds of materials and processes, never leaving aside his extraordinary metalsmithing skills. Each one of his pieces is carefully crafted in a variety of processes that are able to convey his rotund ideas.
Emi Fukuda (Japan) paper
Clementine Edwards (Australia) plastic
Gillian Deery (New Zealand) metal
Katie Jayne Britchford (Australia) stone
Four artists four materials four countries //// A material investigation played out in jewelry
In this exhibition four jewelers explore the materiality of four mediums: paper, plastic, metal, stone. Each artist, who currently identifies with one of the four specified mediums, will create four works based on the theme paper-plastic-metal-stone. They were invited to consider the social and cultural history of their chosen medium, and how the material interacts – historically, culturally and aesthetically – with the other three materials. They were not limited to their ‘assigned’ material but were expected to pursue a pathway that advocates for the ‘unreadymade’; working towards creating works of sentimental and shared values, as Joshua Simon puts it, as a means to infuse meaning in our neomaterial economy.
Paper-plastic-metal-stone will comprise of approximately sixteen jewelry/art objects, around four small works by each of the participating artists.
Paper-plastic-metal-stone was first exhibited during Munich Jewelry Week 2015 this past March with Brooklyn Metal Works being the second stop on the four country tour. Australia will host this show next with New Zealand being the final destination on the itinerary.
mirror milk is an exhibition of new works by artist and contemporary jeweler Timothy Veske-McMahon. These wearable works are drawn from fundamental needs—of communication, of relationships, of the home—to create basic elements of a visual lexicon representing the delicate balance of adult life. The resultant logograms combine and bloat into objecthood.
The artist’s studio practice is divergent with repurposed materials minted through repetitious hours at the workbench as well as virtual objects that blink into existence. Dimensional forms are wrapped and layered with imagery through the culturally competing techniques of marbling and hydrographic printing. These pieces investigate shifts from graphic two-dimensional signifiers to patterned sculptural forms, drawing inspiration from specific geographies and personal spaces.
“We seek out and delve into mirrors for clarifying affirmation but, in truth, are met with a foreign body. This inversion captures and takes hold of our sense of familiarity, slyly perpetuating an alienating sense of self. The operative mechanism remains true beyond the literal geometry of optics. We likewise define ourselves through (co)observational analogs, assuming a universal perception that naïvely forgoes the parallax between viewing the same object from different positions. We assume: a boy is like a boy, a marriage is like a marriage, and hunger is like hunger.
This perceived closeness of similarity and familiarity is a deception. A fictitious shorthand we use in identifying ourselves within society and relationships. If definition is a loss of information, is it possible create a loss-less object?”
Hope Antrim
Jacqueline Barbosa
Hattie Godfrey
Monica Guerra
Samuel Guillen
David Hardcastle
Mia Hebib
Daniell Hudson
Fannie Ip
Vershali Jain
Michal Lando
Alesandro Morosani
Leigh Newman
Valentin Pattyn
Lucia Perluck
Andrea Podob
Judi Powers
Danyell Rascoe
Biba Schutz
Andrea Shiman
Eve Singer
Joanna Storm
Kristi Sword
Kate Taylor
Featuring 24 local jewelers, makers, and metalsmiths.
Come out and support the artists that make Brooklyn the place to be.
