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Long recognized for the ubiquitous turquoise and silver squash-blossom necklaces and concho belts, the traditional metalwork of the Southwest has been in flux for well over half a century Jewelry and metal objects have been produced for both an Indian and a tourist market since the beginning of the twentieth century, and their popularity has witnessed the vagaries of travel, fashion, and the economy. During this same period, the cultures of those who produce this jewelry and those who consume it have changed.... (2003) Complete Story
In the mid-twentieth century, studio jewelry activity centered around two cities in southern California: Los Angeles and San Diego. There existed distinct differences, in both educational opportunities for metalsmiths and overall style between the two areas. This article will concentrate on Los Angeles and its environs.... (2002) Complete Story
Since earning a BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1983, Enterline has narrowed her focus to a handful of simple shapes and forms and has emphasized construction so spare that it might almost seem severe. In the first decade of her career, she often made spheres, but found herself frustrated by what she calls the "industrial" feeling of the shape. Around 1992, she began elongating the halves. "If I raised them up a little bit more, it was an egg form," she recalls, noting that the shape still remained simple and abstract, yet was suggestive of the natural world. Since the early 1990s, she has evolved a library of signature forms-egg, sphere, truncated cone, cylinder, circular medallion, and four-lobed star fruit-that she repeats with endless variation. Each one employs a biomorphic geometry that straddles both the natural world and the constructs of mathematics.... (2004) Complete Story
What does it mean to be a gallerist today, especially one who deals exclusively in art jewelry? To find out, we investigated three twenty-first-century galleries in the United States launched by a new generation of dealers. We learned that they are carrying the jewelry field forward in highly personal ways, while acknowledging the importance of their forerunners, who helped establish the concept of jewelry as art....
(2006) Complete Story
The term avant-garde is freighted with baggage from its source in military language. Consider the implications of applying the idea of an armed vanguard to the arts: The term assumes a condition in which a smaller group leads the way for a larger one, which in turn presupposes an overall unity to a field, whether its painting, dance, literature, or crafts. It assumes that a field moves forward all at once, all in the same direction, just like an army. It implies resistance and struggle, and eventual defeat to a countervailing idea. And it suggests a rear-guard, a reactionary group that desperately hangs on to an obsolete idea. A complex narrative of winners and losers, and organized victory over an outmoded idea is compressed into a single phrase.... (2004) Complete Story
