COUP de COEUR : Anya PINCHUK structures

Anya Pinchuk

« My work is dominated by structure and abstraction. I try to create the illusion of a solid surface by using positive and negative spaces, light and shadows, and transparency. In my work I use my knowledge of geometry to create three dimensional volumetric forms using planes, tubes, and cones, juxtaposing somewhat organic silhouettes and geometric shapes, structure, and patterns. I use repetition as a principle. In the overall appearance (the patterns that I create) as well as in the constructing process (multiple soldering). The pieces are a combination of simplicity (of a shape, line, and form) and complexity (of a pattern, surface, and process) in each piece. Geometric and organic qualities, squares and circles, symmetry and asymmetry, plainness and intricacy, limits and infinity, solidity and transparency coexist in my work. »

Anya Pinchuk Brooch, sterling silver – 2003

Anya Pinchuk Bracelet, sterling silver -2003

Anya Pinchuk bracelet 2006

Anya Pinchuk, Brooch

Anya Pinchuk - brooch- 2006 – sterling silver, 24kt gold plating and spray paint. 

Anya Pinchuk - Brooch 2008. Silver, paint, sapphires

 

 

 

COUP de COEUR : Donna d’AQUINO work in lines

Donna d’AQUINO

« The work that I’ve been making since 1998 is very direct; there’s minimal soldering, and it’s all done by hand without it being overly technical. My approach with the dip is exactly the same. I open the can of Plasti Dip®, mix it, dip the jewelry, then let it set overnight,« . She points out, « This is a highly toxic material to breathe so I wear a mask. »

Donna d’AQUINO‘s work has been influenced by a fascination with architecture, the Russian Constructivist Movement of the early 20th century, and The Modern or New Jewelry Movement of the ’70s in Europe, which pushed the boundaries of what defined jewelry.

« I strip the designs to their essentials while sometimes adding a touch of playfulness. I do use some sterling and gold but primarily I’m applying the color to steel. Interior and exterior architectural structures used for building skyscrapers, bridges, and telephone towers all inspire my work. My original training was in graphic design – I wanted to be an illustrator, and I think that’s why most of my work is either black, white, or grey. Dipping was a way to incorporate a touch of color. I chose red because it’s dramatic, people are drawn to it, and it maintains the piece’s graphic quality, » says D’Aquino. (Ganoskin)

  »work in line » : « This body of work is based on line and the act of drawing. I use wire in place of charcoal or pencil to create three-dimensional drawings for the body and wall. The work is inspired by interior and exterior architectural structures such as bridges and telephone towers.
It is important to me that an object function both on and off the body. These pieces when not being worn are meant to hang on the wall by a single nail as a drawing floating in space.
I am interested in pushing the boundaries that traditionally define western jewelry. »

Donna d’AQUINO – wire bracelet #59: steel/plastic-dip

Donna d’AQUINO – wire brooch #53: steel/plasti-dip

Donna d’AQUINO – bracelet #85: steel

Donna d’AQUINO – scatter pins: steel/red plasti-dip

Donna d’AQUINO – wire bracelet #65: steel/plasti-dip

Donna d’AQUINO – wire bracelets

Donna d’AQUINO – wire neckpiece #1: steel/plasti-dip/ pvc tube

Donna d’AQUINO – wire bracelet #91: steel/white plasti-dip

BLACK is BEAUTIFUL …… & SHARP ! with Sergey Jivetin

 Sergey Jivetin

« While exploring fascinating histories that shaped many innately human constructions and institutions that are governing the world today, I strive to remake these paradoxical insights into physical form, expose their artifice, and thus try to confront the power that these constructions have over people. By choosing jewelry’s small scale and proximity to the body as a format in this series of work, I hope to visually represent a relationship between multifaceted and delicately balanced construction history of our contemporary perception of time and its manifestation. I want the audience to take a look at our symbolic relationship to time by experiencing it dimension, as something fantastic, and yet tangible. »

Sergey Jivetin- Coordinate Sweep Earrings, watch hands, sterling silver  – 2003

Sergey Jivetin- Battle Formation Brooch, watch hands, sterling silver, steel  – 2003

Sergey Jivetin-  Earrings made from Watch Hands and Silver Posts

Sergey Jivetin-  Empire Necklace (detail) – Jeweler’s Sawblades

 

 

 

COUP de COEUR ! Amy Tamblyn

Amy Tamblyn, Découverte à « The Ganoskin Project » ……….
« I am a Sydney based artisan working predominantly with silver and gold. All my work is hand made and so each piece is a one of a kind. When you wear one of my pieces you are wearing a piece of my art.
My jewellery is an exploration of the line and contours of the human form. The pieces are an elegant extension of the body – creating exaggerated volume and kinetic allure. They are fun and eccentrically stylish. The combination of sweeping form with sharp playful lines makes for very contemporary sculptural jewellery.
My creative momentum comes from wandering market places and delving into eras past. Resurrecting found objects, and taking inspiration directly from the material I am working with, I aim to create unique, spontaneous and playful objects.
Soon you’ll be able to buy my pieces at markets and small boutiques across inner Sydney. Until then, simply email me if you are interested in purchasing for yourself or a gift, wholesale, commissions, or for editorial hire.
My studio is located in Surry Hills.  »
[e-mail]

Amy Tamblyn – Cuffs – 24ct gold, stainless steel

Amy Tamblyn - Wearable Art, 925 silver, stainless steel, felt  – ring

Amy Tamblyn – Neckpieces – stainless steel 

Amy Tamblyn -  Etched Series- bronze, brass, paper, ink

 

Darcy MIRO – des bijoux sauvages de guerrier

more wearable sculpture than status symbol

« Based out of Brooklyn, New York, jeweler and sculptor Darcy Miro draws inspiration from nature, architectural form, and the body. Each of her pieces is meticulously crafted from sterling silver, 18 or 24 karat gold, or white bronze. The occasional diamond softens the raw nature of the pieces. The materials she uses reflect the embodiment of her work: strong, bold, and organic. Her sculptural background is evident as the artist’s jewelry takes on the role of wearable art.
“The metal material is totally altered and it is also sculpted in different abstract shapes, some recall flowers, others a topographic map and occasional geometry among other references” says Miro. “I observe everything in my daily life; the water drips on the edge of the sink, the arrangements of leaves on the sidewalk, the relationship of a skirt’s hem to the legs within. I obsess over each mark, the controlled or random details are critical”.
After graduating from Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in Jewelry and Metalsmithing, Darcy has since gained over 15 years of experience in creating custom jewelry, sculpture, and architectural works. For over a year, her quaint showroom in Manhattan’s West Village has become a forum for the public to view and admire her work. Her sculpture has even become a staple of New York culture, as she completed a collaborative installation piece for the façade of the Museum of American Folk Art in 1999. Her work continues to flourish, with many exciting collaborations on the horizon. »

Darcy Miro cuff bracelet - oxidised silver & gold

Darcy Miro cuff bracelet -18 & 24 k gold with black diamond

Darcy Miro cuff bracelet -oxidised silver & black diamonds

« sculpted in different abstract shapes, some recall …. a topographic map »

« Each Miro piece seems both thoroughly modern and at the same time an archaeological find  » (Ganoskin) : oui,  quand je les vois je vois le masque en or d’Agamemnon, le site sauvage de Mycènes* et ses guerres passées, les Atrides* et leurs guerres fratricides …..

celui-ci m’évoque le poignet de force d’un guerrier Romain …..

« These « precious » pieces are not coddled into being. Miro pierces, pulls, and otherwise batters her wax casts to reflect forces of nature few jewelry designers choose to explore: erosion, decomposition, eruption. Once the piece is case, Miro works the metal itself, leaving it grainy as an anthill or smooth as a pebble-or a little of both. The resulting work is like a fragment of a coral reef, shell, or rusted metal found washed up on the sand. The owner herself becomes the final link in the creative process, as the piece bends and changes color with wear. » (Ganoskin)

« Her one-of-a-kind pieces are inspired from such everyday things as leaves and side-walk cracks (she uses found objects to shape sheets of wax which are then cast into metal). Her line is crafted from oxidized copper, gold, and sterling silver.« 

Et encore une fois, un travail du métal d’une force impressionnante …. fait par une jolie jeune femme !!! ça, ça me laisse béate …. d’admiration !!

 

* Mycènes et les Atrides : « Agamemnon, Electre, Oreste, Clytemnestre, Egisthe, ici dans ces murs résonnent encore l’écho de leurs trahisons, vengeances, adultères, parricides. Atrée et Thyeste sont maudits par leur père et bannis pour avoir tué leur plus jeune frère. Envers Thyeste qui a tenté de lui ravir le trône, Atrée voue plus tard une haine implacable, et ivre de vengeance massacre trois de ses fils. Afin de régner, Thyeste ordonne à Égisthe, son fils, d’assassiner Atrée. Puis Agamemnon, fils d’Atrée, s’empare du trône de Mycènes. Egisthe séduit Clytemnestre, femme d’Agamemnon, et fait assassiner celui-ci à son retour de la guerre. Sept ans plus tard, Oreste, fils d’Agamemnon, revenu d’exil tue  mère et amant. Ses sœurs, Iphigénie et Électre, connaîssent les mêmes tourments, la première sacrifiée par son père, la seconde condamnée à mort pour avoir vengé son père. Avec Oreste s’éteint la lignée des Atrides à la descendance maudite. »-
Petite, on rentrait à Athènes, le soir, après un week-end à la mer …. et on entendait des chiens (des chacals ?) hurler, là-haut, sur la colline de Mycènes ….. et moi qui adorait les légendes, pétrifiée, je pensais entendre les cris de ces rois assassinés ….. je frissonnais avec délices au fond de la voiture…..

 

YuYen CHANG – fleshy, woundlike world

Des « bijoux » qui dérangent, attirent -comme pourrait attirer un corps nu, partiellement dévoilé à travers un trou de serrure-, et en même temps « répugnent », comme si l’on pouvait -enfin- regarder (sans être vu) tous ces orifices « défendus » du corps humain ….. attraction-répulsion ….
« Should I look, or look away? In an instant, Yuyen Chang confounds the viewer. Her complicated work plays on our innate attraction to jewelry, its invitation to gaze, and our equally human repulsion from physical deformities: scars, growths, cysts, wounds. As baubles and boils incite these diametrically opposed responses, Chang’s difficult pieces send one scrambling for the socially appropriate behavior.
Chang’s work is intentionally anthropomorphic, disturbingly so. She likens her technique to that of a plastic surgeon, shaping and sculpting on and beneath the surface, using traditional fabrication methods like die­forming, chasing, and repousse. Yet Chang’s goal is hardly to beautify or’ improve’ her subjects; she labors to distort, to subvert. Though Chang made these pieces while still a student, she reveals an awareness of the allure-enhancing and status-bestowing powers of jewelry, especially in modern society, as well as our obsession with erasing any wrinkle, bulge, or flaw.
A most unusual jewelry artist, Chang bypasses witty and aims straight for unsettling. If one were simply to describe her navel- or mouth like brooches, they might seem wry or humorous, but in the flesh, as it were, her jewelry incites not a smile but a straight face-maybe even a wince. This is volatile territory, indeed; deformities are not a laughing matter. But our compulsion to look at them, Chang proves, is a fruitful topic for art indeed, especially art meant to be worn on the body.
Consider the brooches in her « Orifice Series’ ». At their center is an irregular orifice, from which poke crowded tongues? Fingers? Genitals? The brooches feel not quirky but creepy, sinister, abnormal. A similar sensation is elicited by a copper pendant in the same series. While finely executed, its bivalve, bloated form recalls a medical specimen, a detached organ, as if the owner were showing off her recently removed tonsils in a jar. »

Untitled (brooch), « Orifice Series, » 2001 copper  (Photo Jim Wildeman )

« The brooches in Chang’s most recent « Chi-Pa Series » assume more amorphic, growth-like contours. The artist coined the term « chi-pa » by combining the Chinese word for beauty or talent with that for scar or wound, to capture the ambiguous quality of these works. Yet the central, fleshy, woundlike gashes make it almost impossible to call them beautiful. One suspects a line of Yuyen Chang engagement rings is all but out of the question. Her intellectual yet visceral pieces defy not only social mores, but language as well. We’re going to need a new vocabulary to praise this complex work. » (The GANOSKIN)

Clockwise from top left: Untitled (brooch), « Chi Series, »-copper- 2002  –  Untitled (brooch), « Orifice Series, » – copper- 2001 –  Untitled (pendant), « Orifice Series, » 2002 copper, silver chain  — Untitled (brooch), « Chi-Pa Series, » 2002 copper  (Photos: Jim Wildeman)