Craftforms 2012 will feature Body Language: Contemporary Art Jewelry

The 18th International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Craft. November 30, 2012 – January 26, 2013.

Body Language: Contemporary Art Jewelry will explore the various ways that jewelry modifies and supplements the body to address a range of concerns, from the personal to the political. Curated by Suzanne Ramljak, Editor of Metalsmith magazine will run in conjunction with Craft Forms and be displayed in the Ethel Sergeant Clark Smith Gallery.

Guest Curator: Suzanne Ramljak

Jewelry can perform a number of functions, from signaling status to commemorating loss to expressing individual taste.  Regardless of personal value or social import, jewelry always relates to the body, which is its actual or implied site of operation. While all jewelry is created for our bodies, it can also be made of and about the body.  Indeed, jewelry and the human form have a symbiotic relationship, mutually defining and engaging each other.  The exhibition Body Language: Contemporary Art Jewelry will explore the various ways that jewelry modifies and addresses the body as site, subject and material. Through such physical engagement, jewelers knowingly provide insights into the human condition and our corporeal selves.

Jewelry’s direct physicality gives it a unique ability to combine the private and public domains, serving as an emissary of personal content into social space.  To underscore the intimate link between object and wearer, a number of works on exhibit will be accompanied by a photograph of the piece being worn. Viewers can behold the disembodied object in all its splendor and also situated upon a living body. These images, selected or art directed by the jewelers themselves, will provide a crucial human context for the pieces on view.

To further underline the vital interplay between jewelry and wearer, the exhibition will be organized around various sub-themes based on the work’s content or transformative impact. Possible sections include, The Body in Pieces (jewelry featuring anatomical parts); The Body in Motion (pieces that capture the body’s movement and shifting contours); and The Body as Medium (jewelry that uses actual body substances like hair or skin).  Through a selection of approximately 100 works by 40 to 50 contemporary jewelry artists, Body Language will reveal the potent and telling relationship between the human form and the objects we choose to attach to ourselves. 

Body Language Artists:

Kristin Lora
Shona Kearney
Arthur Hash
Kathryn Marchbank
Julia Harrison
Heather White
Margaux Lange
Jessica Calderwood
Mary Hallem Pearce
Gerd Rothmann
Hanna Hedman
Ruudt Peters
Bruce Metcalf
Lilyana Bekic
Kathleen Browne
Julia Barello
Paul McClure
Douglas Bucci
Barbara Mann
Jill Baker Gower
Melanie Bilenker
Robert Ebendorf
Kathleen Kennedy
Anika Smulovitz
Sondra Sherman
Masako Onodera
Jennifer Crupi