Metalcyberspace - Contemporary Jewelry Design & Studio Jewelry

Board Meeting - New Work by Anna Whitley at Fingers Jewellery Sept.15 - 28, 2008
Preview Monday 15th from 5.30-7.00pm

Signs from Nature - Birgit Laken / Suzanne Esser at Galeria Reverso through Oct.4, 2008

“Trees Above” by Silke Spitzer
at Ornamentum Gallery through Sept. 29,2008

“Nest” Necklace, 18K gold, wood, natural rubber, 2008

DAVIDE BIGAZZI - The Art of Chasing & Repousse’
Weekend workshops now open for enrollment:
Sept. 27-28 & Oct. 18-19 Sat. & Sun. - 9am to 12pm & 1pm to 5pm
Two Day Workshop Tuition: $435 (14 hrs)
Materials Included: Tools are supplied

Solo Exhibition of Yael Krakowski
Opening Sept. 15, 2008 at Galeria Bielak

The 3rd Annual MJSA Trade Show for Jewelry Making
Sept. 17 & 18, 2008 RI Convention Center, Providence RI

Learn everything from soldering, casting, refining, and design techniques to pricing and promoting your products to photographing your jewelry. Have your questions answered and walk away with the knowledge and resources you won’t find at any other jewelry industry event. And best of all, these opportunities can be taken advantage of for FREE. For a full description, please visit the seminar page.

Ornament as Expression: The Jewelry of Arline Fisch

Aug. 24- Dec. 7, 2008
Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin

Meet the artist & booksigning Oct. 2, 2008 at 2:30 space is limited.

Masters Workshop March 27-29, 2009

METAL Inclinations
International Online Metalsmithing and Jewelry Exhibition

Call for Entries:
Do to overwhelming demand, the Society for Midwest Metalsmiths has decided to extend the deadline for METAL Inclinations until July 28, 2008 at midnight PST

Exhibition debuts online October 31, 2008 and runs one year until October 31, 2009
Jurors for the show are: Michael Monroe, Marilyn da Silva and Susie Ganch
Sponsored by the Society for Midwest Metalsmiths

Full Duplex
Exhibition / Installation
Stefan Heuser + Jiro Kamata
at Ornamentum through July 7, 2008

On the surface, the jewelry of Stefan Heuser and Jiro Kamata stand in stark contrast to the other. Kamata’s sleek, perfectly minimal forms seem at odds with Heuser’s rough, burnt and crudely enameled surfaces. However both come alive when you delve beneath the obvious and open up to explore their underlying mysteries.

During his time as the honored “city goldsmith” of Hanau, Germany, Jiro Kamata was transfixed by an old etching of the city, drawn in a completely illogical “fish-eye” view, that he found within the vast library of the “Drawing Academy”. From this he was inspired to explore the camera lens as subject, as well as the experience of seeing the world reflected through the lenses placed within his brilliantly thoughtful yet constructively minimalist jewelry. In his experimentation, Kamata discovered that by painting the back of each lens, he could achieve the deepest black and brightest white imaginable, and that light reflection and refraction would present a multitude of colors from within the glass. While the observer studies the jewelry object, a reflection on the mysteries of the surrounding environment, not to mention the memories and experiences that have passed through the glass within its’ “lifetime” become an intrinsic part of the encounter. The scorched and warped surface of a Stefan Heuser brooch, a black grey or brown rectangle pinned to the clothing, possessing an enormous visual strength, ominous and unforgiving… yet the true subversion comes into view when you turn the piece over in your hand. While leaving the front of the brooch a “blank slate”, he decorates the back using the traditional tools and techniques of the goldsmith… but he turns those against themselves as well: crude enameling oozing out from behind torn metal combined with black stones set on a burnt black backdrop, or a ruby encrusted gold brooch with the outermost layer of gold burnt to give a brown color that is unrecognizable as the valuable material it is.

“He is purposefully doing all of the things we yell at the students for doing wrong”:
Jamie Bennett- professor SUNY New Paltz

Both artists currently live and work in Munich, Germany and are graduates of the prestigious Munich Academy of Art.
Full Duplex: the transmission of data in two directions simultaneously