Julia Barello’s “Flowers of Rhetoric: Paramythia”
Two jewelry shows open January 19 at the Museum of Contemporary Craft (724 NW Davis).
Where jewelry as craft rather than commodity diverged from the wearable into the contemporary art realm of the conceptual, artists have made fascinating work. But a new show at the Museum is as much about the intimate relationship of wearer to jewelry as it is about the piece in isolation as a concept or a construct. Because for Touching Warms The Art (not a fan of the title, but …) is a show for which artists were invited to create jewelry of non-precious materials, work that visitors to the Museum would be invited to touch, to try on, to wear. So visitors can feel the weight of Mindy Herrin’s neck piece on the collarbone or perhaps swan around in Eliana Arenas long tulle and monofilament confection. There are invitingly and repulsively tactile pieces, magical, seductive work like Julia Barello’s necklace (above) made of dyed X-Ray film (!), and pieces that are deliciously smart, like Agnieska Zoltowski’s piece that isolates the ring finger on display in a plexiglass box.
Hold the date for January 30, 7 PM when Portland-based fashion designers create one-of-a-kind pieces in response to the work in the show at Action/Re-Action Runway Show at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. We’re excited about this collaboration between ULTRA and the Museum.
Kristine Bolhuis “Expansion”
The second show, Framing: The Art of Jewelry, addresses a second incidence of distance between object and viewer, in a show curated by Metalsmith Magazine. The work in this show was originally one more step removed from its relationship with the body as it was an exhibition to appear only in print.
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