Dushko Petrovich and Roger White, eds., Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment (New York: Paper Monument, 2012).

Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment is a multi-authored volume about art assignments, delivering them, experiencing them, and devising them, with many short essays and thoughts on their value and purpose. The anthology is produced by the Brooklyn-based not-for-profit publisher Paper Monument—responsible for a series of journals on contemporary art—and designed by Project Projects. It is a stylish book: slim, printed in charcoal black and creamy white on matte paper, every page divided into two columns, with well-chosen fonts to demarcate headings from prose.

As explained by the editors in the afterword, the publication stemmed from dissatisfaction with the lack of attention to the “nuts and bolts of art teaching,” despite the plethora of material on art pedagogy and the history of the art school (page 122). The editors wanted to produce a practical, hands-on “book of art assignments,” so they asked contacts, friends, and friends of friends to relay their experiences of setting and participating in them.

In the book, there is such a wide range of responses to this call, from clear technique-based tasks—such as David True’s circumvention of still life by asking students to create a pile of boxes each colored a different shade of white as a composition for their painting (page 89)—to more experimental assignments. Kevin Zucker’s “Bring in a song you’re embarrassed you like/bring in images of past work you’re embarrassed by” (page 14) is just one example that challenges the hierarchical notion of proactive teacher passing down knowledge to passive, receptive student.

Despite the huge variety of contributions from “people who teach, people who study, people who teach but didn’t study, people who studied but don’t teach, and people who never set foot in an art school” (page 122), it is possible to group the content into three distinct categories. There are examples of assignments that you could roll out in class next term, almost like a how-to, such as Ira Fay’s “Sports Assignment” (page 28), Julian Kramer’s “Wet-on-wet large still life,” (page 49), or Paul Thek’s comprehensive list of questions “Teaching Notes: 4-Dimensional Design” (pages 78–80). Then there are first-person narratives of particularly memorable, impactful, and funny art assignments like the one issued to Brad Farwell during an undergraduate architecture course that involved Farwell and fellow students building a scale-model façade out of cake, without the assistance of any “mortar” (i.e. icing) (page 69), Jeremy Sigler’s account of his experience at New Haven Institute of Technology (pages 107–110), or Mamie Tinkler’s account of how “a muddy wreck of a canvas” stuck in her mind as an instructive art school humiliation.

The third category comprises entries that offer broader commentary on artistic education, including many that question the value and purpose of the art assignment in the first place. Among these is Jon Pylypchuk’s petulant dismissal of the art assignment and his delight at a strike that kept the professors at arm’s length during his journey of artistic discovery (page 75), and Liam Gillick’s argument that assignments are like homework, creating “an artificial power relationship between student-artist and older ex-student-teacher-artist,” that replaces “the potential for real work and real recognition of power dynamics” (page 119). Paul Thek’s long list of questions that “stimulate a playful but in-depth exploration of the interrelated nature of personal and contextual events, as a part of artistic production” (page 71) looms large in the book: It is reprinted in full, and several teachers and students— Harrell Fletcher, Abraham Cruzvillegas, and Naomi Rincon-Gallardo—recall their responses to it (pages 71–74).

Many of the book’s entries show how a limitation, or setting an unexpected obstacle, is integral to the art assignment. Designed to knock students’ preconceived notions of art off kilter, they seem a popular way of prompting creative thinking and practice. Material constraints feature throughout: Lauren Frantz asks students to make a drawing on a sheet of paper only using a car (page 12), Sara Rafferty’s assignment involves trying to make a device that would protect an egg dropped from three stories using a napkin, string, oyster crackers, and corrugated cardboard (page 31), and Demetrius Oliver recollects a 3-D design brief that involved making something in a forest way off-campus with the “materials available at hand” (page 33), à la Henry Thoreau.

The book contains many tales of radical, unconventional briefs and students’ extreme responses. Jeremy Sigler recalls a video work that involved a female student being punched “in the face hard by her boyfriend” (page 107). Kevin Zucker advises that art instructors should not let 19-year-old students know about Viennese Actionism for fear of unleashing something “genuinely shocking” on impressionable minds (page 15), and Jay Battle remembers a student reenacting Yves Klein’s famous leap into the void, the performance ending in broken legs because a branch meant to provide the means of escape was cut down (pages 105–106).

The collective experience reflected in the book demonstrates how the art assignment often ventures into dicey ethical territory—a number of contributors mention that higher management within the academy would not approve of the things that take place in their class in the name of education. Flicking through the book, it is not hard to see why. The clandestine course in making pornography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Amie Seigel, pages 100–101), the “Project Class” that John Menick participated in that involved keeping a secret within the class walls (page 61), and Julie Ault’s self-assignment “Don’t be Yourself” (pages 88–89), where she assumed another identity as a Republican supporter in order to fit in with the culture of political science at Hunter College, all test the limits of what is acceptable within institutes of higher education. They also reveal a recurrent theme in the book: the difficulty, or impossibility, of teaching art, where it is debatable that any sort of guidance, syllabus, or structure that determines progress exists in the first place.

The book left me wondering whether my own mantra of learning and teaching in my role as lecturer in design history—the tutor as dispassionate provider of knowledge and experience, or enthusiastic encourager of self-development—is relevant to the instruction of artists. Staff with close contact to the studio, including teaching assistants and technicians, often become embroiled in the lives of students (one particularly extreme example of this is Peter Brown’s tale of teacher-student romance that ends up in marriage and children on pages 66–67). The division between art and life is, of course, a fabrication. Nevertheless, I would insist upon a distinction between “my” life and “their” art when operating in an institutional context, if only to confirm my position (as a lecturer) held to the codes of conduct stipulated in my contract.

There is an American bias in the work. Throughout, there are lots of references to “freshmen,” including a fun illustration, “Freshmen Eyes,” by Pam Lins, that starts the book. The language is not the problem, though, nor are the specific cultural references. It is more the current pedagogic and institutional cultures of the American art school that stress individualism, the expectation that art occupy a counter-cultural position and “rage against the machine,” which might be less relevant to those based in Europe and elsewhere. Richard Wentworth is one of the few contributors from Europe. His gentle reflection on the internationality of art education today, and the myriad responses to a brief that involved charting a journey within London, bring attention to “a complexity” within globalized systems of twenty-first century artistic education he never anticipated (page 115).

It is connections like these—between discrete assignments and wider cultural contexts of artistic education—that are lacking within the anthology. Too many of the assignments are seen within the bubble of the studio, where anything is potentially permissible, without relating much to art’s position within the academy and indeed institutional pressures operating at one level above the tutor-instructor.

Exceptions to the rule include James Benning’s brief reference to the increasing bureaucratization of art departments and how his institution’s current fear of lawsuits has curtailed his ability to run off-site classes (page 120). But it was Mira Schor’s longer reflection (pages 90–91) on the importance of her assignment, “You have permission to fail,” that best illuminated current contexts of artistic education. She brings attention to the “corporate atmosphere of educational institutions” and the pressure to provide students a full program that sets them up for success in later life, which she analogizes as a “military quadrille.” Instead of venturing into the unknown, art students are under significant pressure to reach a defined, intended outcome in their work, succumbing to “self-commodification,” Schor suggests, utilizing languages of formalism, subjective expressionism, and conceptualism that “at least on the surface, seems to reward rationalised concordance between visual appearance and verbal articulation, a to b.” Her point is that packed schedules—“the appearance of instruction and of money’s worth”—result in students unwilling to take risks, relying on expressions of their own intention to justify their work.

The publication is an undeniably useful source book of ideas for artist-educators, even if as an educator you would do it differently or modify some of the ideas to your own demands. Ensuring that the art assignment allows a place to fail, to not be quite sure, to explore and experiment with the material world surrounding us, will lead to unpredictable, but ultimately humane, experiences like those recounted in this book. Today’s approaches to teaching art and design might seem eccentric and marginal when compared to other forms of instruction within the academy. Yet let’s hope the art assignment’s openness, liberal mantra, and insistence on enabling students to think for themselves might yet escape the managerial turn in higher education, providing invaluable and transferable skills for students in the future.

The questions in this interview are loosely inspired by the word pairings published on the exhibition announcement. They are:

Corpus • Parallel        Investigation• Reflection        Activity • Still
Objects • Abject        Hidden • Reveal            Shiny • Dull
Volume • Space        Missing • Present            Skin • Surface
Beyond • Between        Internal • Empty

Marthe Le Van: Two radical silversmiths, esteemed makers, designers, and teachers, unite for a two-person show. Do you feel you have been on parallel paths? Why intersect now?

Anders Ljungberg: We have been working in parallel at different times, both as artists (in a number of exhibitions) and in teaching (Stockholm and Oslo). For me, there are relatively few people in the field of silversmithing I wish to collaborate and exhibit with, and David is definitely number one among these, because I find a kind of friction grinding in his work that is both disturbing and very sweet, but also because he simply is one of the most interesting people on the contemporary silversmithing scene. There is a need to raise this artistic discipline out of a context filled with limitations and bring it into a contemporary relevance. This, I believe, both David and I have the same pronounced ambition to do.

David Clarke: Firstly, Rosemarie Jäger invited us to exhibit together. She wanted this to happen and saw that there could be an interesting conversation between the works and us as artists. However, we have known each other for eight years and regularly meet in Stockholm where we discuss, share our thinking, and sometimes argue—we’re a bit of an odd couple. Our friendship means that we have built up a sense of trust and honesty in our discussions, which is a rare thing in the small and sometimes petty world of silversmithing. For me, this exhibition isn’t really about working in parallel, it’s much more focused on how ideas can collide and works play off one another.

What explorations, in thought and action, led you to make the pieces in What Is Not?

Anders Ljungberg: I have, in my work, highly devoted myself to examining spaces that exist beyond a physical reality. This can be about the interior of a vessel that is not completely reachable for us, about what actually happens in a pipe system beyond the tap, or what we imagine is going on behind the wall defining and confirming our physical reality. Some of my works slide into or out of the wall, in a state between physical reality and beyond a spatial dream. Most of the works in What Is Not have, however, started from a bureau that I’ve simply been cutting up. The idea behind this was to reveal the previously hidden, and, out of this form, an arised “nudity” provides space for items that fill and examine those naked, empty spaces.

David Clarke: I felt it was essential for me to develop a new body of work. I wanted to actively explore new territories, which would allow me to develop my visual language, tap into deeper emotions, and utilize different tools. I had some key words in mind to anchor me: void, skin, and loss. These led me toward casting pewter and lead, which was a surprisingly quiet and intimate process as you handle the molds, swirling the metal until it sets … literally, waiting for movement to cease and a skin to form.

What was the most challenging piece to make in this show, and why?

Anders Ljungberg: It is very difficult to say because I often work with my objects in a dialogue with each other during the process. If you mean technically (or perhaps this is artistically—it is sometimes not possible to separate them), it has been difficult to create the illusion of gravity or the tension in surface that I was looking for in most of the works. In some of the works, the ambition has been to be relatively close to reality (such as the Bag Beneath #1, which is a three-dimensional “realistic” drawing of a plastic bag), while in other pieces, I have had a more illustrative and distanced approach.

David Clarke: For me, the act of making isn’t challenging, as I make all the time. However, the absolute challenge comes from deciding what to make and in determining the relevance of an object once you take it out of the workshop context and place it in front of an audience. There was a degree of active experimentation involved with the method I used. When I felt something was less successful than I wanted, I was free to melt it down and start again. That’s incredibly liberating.

Several pieces in What Is Not live in context with another object—a table, a box, part of a chair. What is the reasoning behind this?

Anders Ljungberg: The fact that the law of gravity causes all material to constantly strive toward the center of the earth has been something I have worked with in many earlier projects. On this journey of gravity, the material and the objects being formed out of them meet other material. In this encounter, objects create conditions for each other’s existence. The jug needs the table to not keep falling; the floor needs a house construction to be a functional floor; the house needs the ground, and so on. Nearly all of my work has been about the relationship between the objects themselves, the object and the user of it, and object and space. In my mind, an object is not existing without those relations. It becomes in this friction with the other.

There is a sharp tension in your objects. Simultaneously, your pieces seem to desire activity but are made incapable of it. Why is suggesting function but denying it important to you?

Anders Ljungberg: Actually, most of my works in this exhibition are perfectly possible to activate, which is something I want to encourage. In this exhibition, for example, I let people drink warm apple juice from one of the vessels, which offered a completely different understanding of the piece than just looking at it. The tactile, bodily experience through handling is important to me. It is simply a further dimension to the understanding of the object. Sometimes, however, I choose to remove the practical function to highlight a different concept of function. This has been a long tradition in silversmithing. For example, some Baroque pieces had connotations to practical functional items, but nevertheless the function was essentially social. My work is often around the more emotional aspects of everyday use that create inner structures in our lives. For me, it is sometimes more efficient to show those emotional aspects by removing the practical dimension and, instead, allow the use of them to take part as a dream or a thought of functionality. This creates a poetic dimension that might not be there if they were only practical.

David Clarke: It’s important to state that the original object and material has been removed and its primary function has been corrupted. In consciously removing the original, I’ve created space for new thinking and interpretation, which is intentionally not of the practical but is of the emotional. These pieces have a direct relationship to the domestic environment, as all of the originals were highly functional, well-used objects from my mother’s house. In developing a “second skin” through casting, I have created a neutral surface on which audiences can project their own narratives.

Do you intend your pieces to have personalities or express emotions?

Anders Ljungberg: Absolutely yes. I think that applies to both of us. I often find myself talking about my works as if they have their own vision/idea, which is reflected in titles like Jug Looking for a New View, etc. My work highlights the absolute highlights (as mentioned above) of emotional perspective in the user situation when pouring, drinking, etc. My idea about objects is that, when they become a part of our bodies and minds through use, they define us as human beings and we complete them as objects with all the dreams we have put into them since ancient times.

David Clarke: Historically, I am known for producing playful, offbeat work with plenty of eccentric characters in the ranks. I enjoy the naming process almost as much as the making, and I always try and come up with something that reflects an object’s personality. However, this body of work is coming from a very different place and should evoke a different kind of emotional reaction. I based these pieces on objects that all meant something to my mother, and the collection is a direct response to her death last year. I feel it’s the most poignant body of work I’ve ever made.

Who has inspired you in the past, and how? Who is currently making work that interests you, and why?

Anders Ljungberg: What inspires me is the same as always—trying to see what is hidden in everyday life behind layers of habituation. When it comes to art and makers, there are loads of them, but lately, two artists I have found interesting are Markus Schinwald and Adrián Villar Rojas. But also, the Baroque period is inspiring me because of its different concepts of functionality behind the wall of functionalism.

David Clarke: I’m finding a lot of parallels between architecture and my work at the moment, even though the scale and purpose is different. I was working in Japan last year and visited Ryue Nishizawa’s building on the island of Teshima. This was a deeply humbling and engaging experience that has stayed with me. I’ve been exploring a sense of space being contained and defined within a skin, and also wanting to re-create something that would connect and captivate the viewer in the same way that that building did to me.

Have you recently experienced anything that filled your mind with wonder or your heart with joy? What was it?

Anders Ljungberg: Definitely setting up this exhibition together with David. But also, after being so focused on my own work, meeting my students in their doubts and dreams in making art.

David Clarke: I am always highly motivated by a decent slice of cake and getting back to my own bed after weeks on the road working—that usually fills my heart and stomach with joy.

Thank you.

My studio is in a small industrial pocket of Chicago called Kingsbury. Nestled in between a concrete manufacturer, a leather tannery and a metal refinery, with access to two train lines and Chicago’s elevated bike and walking path, my studio reminds me of all the reasons that I love living in a big city with a rich history of manufacture.

My studio is set up so that I am able to hammer, weld, solder, fabricate, and finish all hours of the day or night, along with having a clean area for design and modeling. I have two large windows that overlook the Chicago River, the I-94 overpass, and my industrial neighbors. My practice is informed by the masculine identity of industry, and I am energized by watching the theatrical dance of the cranes moving sand from the barges on the river to the concrete manufacture’s conveyor belt while I forge steel into delicate lace-like patterns.

www.sarahholdenmetalsmithing.com

magic language///game of whispers
September 10–13, 2015
The Nordic Craft Pavilion, Révélations, Grand Palais, Paris, France
Curated by Katrine Borup, Agnieszka Knap, Anna Leoniak, Katarina Siltavuori, and Marianne Zamecznik

Norwegian curator Marianne Zamecznik is a relative newcomer to craft—she previously worked for 13 years as an art curator, and organized her first craft show in 2013—but her innovative approach to designing and organizing exhibitions has garnered her some important commissions, and caught AJF’s eye. The following interview was conducted in two phases, before and after the opening of magic language///game of whispers, a show that Marianne conceived and co-curated for Norwegian Craft at the Révélations fair in Paris. My first volley of questions was largely based on reading her essay, Exhibition Making as a Driving Force in Contemporary Craft Discourse, published in Crafting Exhibitions, and looking at the concepts that presided over the collective selection process for magic language///game of whispers. The essay is important, as it articulates some of the fundamental ideas that inform Zamecznik’s approach to curating, and her strategy for the Paris exhibition. Zamecznik refers to the concept of “dynamic object,” describes curation as a medium, and advocates for innovation and experimentation.

The second part of the interview took place shortly after the installation of the show at the Grand Palais: the subtle curatorial process of Chinese Whispers had seduced many visitors, probably eluded some, and Zamecznik tells us why, in some cases, one should go easy on didactics. A photographic report on the exhibited objects—in the sequence in which they were selected—appears at the bottom of the article, courtesy of André Gali.

Benjamin Lignel: Your essay advocates treating exhibition-making as a medium that relies on experimentation, “in the same way as any medium relies on experimentation.” Later in the text, you focus on “innovation” as a key element of curatorial research. “Innovation” seems quite a modernist criterion, and is a little unexpected in the context of your decidedly post-studio[1]point of view. Can you explain why that term is important to you?

Marianne Zamecznik: When advocating for treating exhibitions as any other medium and therefore as a space for experimentation, it’s important to keep in mind that exhibition-making largely is seen as an instrument for institutions to reach out and communicate with an audience, as a tool to participate in current discourse. Seeing exhibitions as tools and means to communicate—the goal being to communicate—reduces the exhibition to an instrument, a tool. In a time of unprecedented proliferation of exhibitions in the field of art, when art is made for exhibitions (hence the post-studio “problem”) and where exhibitions, at least in the last couple of decades, have played an ever-increasing part in legitimizing certain practices, curators have started making claims that the exhibition be treated as a medium in itself. This is their answer to the many, many pointless exhibitions that do nothing but place a few objects together, under the most daft and thoughtless heading possible, in order to obtain something else from it, be it meeting political goals, economic goals, strategic goals—whatever. So I see the exhibition not as a medium for artists exclusively, but for curators, too.

Comparing experimental exhibition-making with post-studio practice is therefore a bit confusing. I see post-studio practice as a result of how the art economy has changed artists’ conditions during the last decades, especially in the field of contemporary visual arts. In the applied arts, post-studio practices are comparatively less prevalent—craft artists are to a large extent still making things themselves, in their studios, and work on projects that aren’t only tailored for a specific context. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as craft artists working on a commission for a permanent public installation or an exhibition, but for me this constitutes an important difference between the two artistic practices.
 
Now, why is innovation important to me? I think my support of innovation is predicated on postmodern terms, not modernist necessarily (depends if one defines postmodernism as a part of modernism) in the sense that after the fall of the grand narratives and therefore under the auspices of “weak thought” (Gianni Vattimo) we do experiment and innovate, not with the goal of progress, but with the goal to find other answers than the ones grand narratives were able to come up with, to reveal paths that were previously overlooked. So the goal of innovation is a revisiting of history, if you like, a rewriting of the sciences: political, social, and economic. Postmodernism opened up these possibilities, which simultaneously brought with them this cacophony of noises and voices, conspiracies and doubts, and which in the end feed the postmodern quest for experimentation and innovation. Because of this overwhelming multitude, the institutions have become more important than ever in legitimizing what could be considered contemporary art with a capital C. In the end, they pick up certain ideas, designating them to the current discourses, streamlining them to follow what a few powerful institutions profess as being important and therefore “in vogue.” And the others follow. One could even say that because of the over-proliferation of exhibitions we see today, exhibitions are not anymore credible legitimators in themselves. Instead, institutional power has become increasingly important in this function.

Taking this into account, my advocacy of the importance of experimenting with exhibitions (inside as well as outside the institutions) should be understood in this light: underscoring the importance of the exhibition as a unique expression—one that is not subordinated to, or instrumentalized by, institutions—is a way of taking back that power. Because innovation is still one important driving force in the politics and economy of contemporary art, in the emergence of discourses. We may understand innovation as predicated on the goal of enlightenment, the betterment in the future. The goal of postmodern rewriting is not a better future per se, but a way to replace the oppressive grand narrative with a narrative about us. Now, whether this can be called innovation or not is probably subject to discussion, but I use the word in this sense. Innovation as a tool to be part of the story.

You explain in your essay how “today’s conservators understand that an object’s original appearance may no longer be a realistic or even desirable goal” and advocate instead for “presenting the work of art in a way that puts it in relation to culture at any given time.” By presenting an artwork in relationship to the culture of its time, it “continues to grow and produce. Constructively critiquing and regenerating itself.” I find that to be an extremely powerful and super-contentious idea. Can you describe, first, what this strategy stands in opposition to?

Marianne Zamecznik: Isn’t placing objects into stripped and seemingly neutral, “time-less” environments more contentious? Why else would curators and artists keep discussing the false promises of the white cube, scientific truth, and Western culture’s historicism bias, the belief that history determines the way things are and must be?

Duchamp was the first to realize that any readymade, non-art object on its own could be displayed as “art” if dissociated from its original context, use, and meaning. The dissociation is key to obtain and enhance aura, be it the auratic art object, the artist’s aura—such as Beuys’s shamanistic aura—or transference of aura to the event or the display itself, such as is the case with installation art, where aura is transferred from the object to the place, the museum, or gallery. The stripped, timeless gallery space provides an essential framework for that to be believable. Presenting objects as isolated and dissociated in the context of the legitimizing institution is essential in order to achieve the inflated value of an artwork.

The text you refer to is concerned with curating craft, and I suggested that presenting artworks in more direct relationship to the culture of their time may allow craft to carve out a different route for itself, utilizing a sort of “living” context that does not rely on the mechanism of dissociation in order to obtain aura (and value) but rather through their use and application. I know there is a strong opposition to this among craft artists. It is precisely the aura (and the inflated value of visual art) that is at stake—it is what applied art or craft seeks to obtain, on an equal level as visual art. One way to obtain this is by mimicking the way visual art is presented. Obviously this strategy doesn’t work.

I think it’s time that craft turn toward other exhibition strategies better suited to it, that will strengthen its position in contemporary culture over time. Craft or applied art should play on different strings than visual art—simply by being what they claim to be, through their use, application, and material value, as dynamic objects in the world, uninhibited by the double ontology that visual art struggles with.

Do I understand correctly that “dynamic object” refers to a way of treating objects (rather than to intrinsic qualities of the artwork itself)?

Marianne Zamecznik: Yes. I’ve borrowed the term from the field of conservation, because I see works of art or craft or any object as having a “life span” that plays out in real time, even when it is stuck in some storage somewhere. It’s an idea I got from the artist Øystein Aasan, with whom I developed the exhibition design for the sixth edition of Momentum, the Nordic biennale in Moss, Norway, in 2011. He talked about how the artwork was some day born in the studio of the artist, only to embark on a long journey, often outliving its creator. The exhibition moment was just one point in that life span.

I found the idea strange at first, because I was used to focusing on the work as a static entity. But of course it changes, especially considering the changes it undergoes in relation to discourses that surround the work. That is why a work, style, etc. seems to becomes obsolete, and we try somehow to overlook either the work or the way it relates to new discourses as they emerge, instead focusing on the artist’s persona, the brand, etc. In contrast, this way of thinking about the work—as having a life span—makes a lot of sense to me, especially when considering the way we treat objects or contextualize them in exhibitions or other presentation formats. I also happen to think that one should do things with art objects, like play around with them in different ways and see what happens.

You allude to Anton Vidokle’s manifesto in your essay—in particular to the fear that it is “exhibitions that produce art” as opposed to artists. You mention that fear, but you don’t really address it. So I have two questions:

•    Do you think this issue is relevant to your practice?
•    How do you address it?

Marianne Zamecznik: Yes, I think the issue Vidokle raises is very relevant—but in the text I mainly use his statement to show the skepticism many artists have toward curators and the over-proliferation of exhibitions in our time; his argument is ultimately that curators have too much power and that artists are somehow victims in that scheme. This is of course not an original statement by any measure—I’ve been met with this attitude since the first day of school, when I switched from studying arts and craft to become a curator. What I’ve always said to artists is that they have the power of “No”—just say “No” if you don’t want your work to be included in shows you don’t approve of. What I’m against is the attitude that curators are merely producers, coordinators, and that any curatorial proposition has an unwanted effect on the artist’s work. I’m against the view that art works need to be protected and locked into one “original” way of being seen or presented. I think the work of curators is precisely to interfere—to place the art work in contexts that creates new connections with the world, that challenges its boundaries and the artist’s intention. In my opinion, the art work can only gain from being used in that way—of being used by people, curators, readers of all sorts—that’s how the crude signal appears, that makes the object “flicker”—as opposed to the pristine signal—the original, uninterrupted object. So that’s why I included that quotation from Vidokle. He’s very skeptical of curators and the way the art market is oppressing artists. But, having said that, I think his skepticism is understandable. I’m skeptical, too. I agree that there are too many exhibitions being made for the wrong reasons. But it doesn’t mean that one should write off every curator and avoid any mingling with his or her ideas. I would rather encourage artists to employ a healthy criticality and assess whether the artistic proposition of a curator is of any interest to them. That’s all.

Having said that, on a personal level I’m always afraid to upset artists. I can be a real pushover when dealing with artists—they usually get what they want—if I am able to provide it. I like to enter into dialogue with the artists I work with—and trust is a big issue for me. I really want to give the artists a sense of being taken into account, that they can alter my scheme at any time—but they have to be able to convince me. I love to be convinced—it means that I learned something that made me change my mind; that potentially made me develop into a better version of myself. I mean, if I don’t get something out of this on a personal level, I might as well do something else. I don’t have to make exhibitions at any cost. My dream job is actually to be an artist’s assistant.

Your defense of museum objects having a “social life” and flickering (as opposed to trying to preserve them in the formaldehyde of the artist’s original intention) concludes with a thumbs-up to Decorum, a cross-disciplinary exhibition of fiber art curated by Anne Dressen at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2013). That exhibition featured clusters of objects displayed according to “similarity”: They were together because they looked similar. Why was that exciting to you?

Marianne Zamecznik: I loved Decorum because it mixed the objects together, both into one coherent image as well as subordinating them under the same narrative or code, so to speak: the code of the home. The functions of objects in a home are quite specific—even the paintings or family photos on the wall. You read objects in a home as things to live with. And the Decorum show pushed the envelope of what can be presented in a museum of modern art: in terms of re-creating a sort of eclectic and eccentric apartment/home constituted by a mix of objects—all textile, or to be read as textile. I loved this multilayered approach and think this way of presenting the textile medium opens it up to the idea of use. Within the framework of the museum, which usually discourages “use,” except contemplation, this is a funny spin. I don’t think all the rooms of Decorum were equally successful. Some looked a bit like overstuffed museum display, where they hadn’t been able to make the living room space convincing enough, like the last section: the long corridor. A number of amazing pieces were on display in this section and therefore still added to the impressiveness of the show as a whole, but did not go all the way in terms of display coherence. And there is an almost reflexive skepticism toward the theatrical in arts, especially as regards display. So I liked Decorum for addressing that taboo.

As a curatorial device, the urge to put similar objects together is in no way a new or never-before articulated desire; quite the contrary. The world has seen infinite numbers of collections of similar things that have been presented under equally many banners or themes. I guess if you asked somebody on the street to make an “exhibition” it would be the first impulse: all blue things together. It’s like a child’s game. So in a way it’s a drift in us that is almost primal. What happens when you put two blue things together is that they both become similar and more different; the blueness makes them belong together but at the same time the difference between a blue plastic toy and a Viagra pill becomes more articulated. In this new juxtaposition, a vernacular can emerge: a sort of new way of putting the two very different things into the same universe. And maybe this connection between the child’s toy and the Viagra becomes a new story, something we bring with us into the future. I think the idea of this vernacular is what is exciting to me on a personal level.

The selection process for magic language///game of whispers is similarly interested in what an associative process can bring out: the exhibition’s curatorial principle was that you, Marianne, chose one object, sent it to one of your four co-curators, who had to respond to “your” object with one of their choosing, which they then sent to a third curator, etc. This game went on for several weeks until the five of you had selected a total of 25 works. Can you tell us, at this stage (one day before installation) what you learned, what you enjoyed, what you found challenging?

Marianne Zamecznik: There are so many things—the challenges were, among others: How can I possibly convey the idea I had in my head to my co-curators? Would they understand where I wanted to go with this? Would they think it was fun and important, too? Or would they be provoked that I tried to press this whole concept over their head? Another problem was that of the role of the artist: in this game they are really providers of pieces already conceived before the show. Their participation in the exhibition-making process is sort of nullified. As I have stated before, I enjoy working with the artists, on their terms. But I realized, too, that sometimes the curators need to have a strong direction, to let their intuition speak loudly, maybe louder than the artist’s voice. This is one of the shows where that is necessary.

Another challenge is obviously to make a show where you have no idea about the outcome. I mean we have a sort of idea now, but when we start installing tomorrow I guess we will all be really thrown off by some of the juxtapositions: some will be nice, at least I hope, but some might be just ugly and “wrong.” Scale, textures, colors: there are so many surprises to come! But this possible mega-failure is also what I enjoy, at least now, haha! Ask me again on the opening, see if I’m still enjoying it! I learned that there are only so many things you can deal with in one show. I know that this game of ours is activating a vast array of topics (such as the problem of art as commodity, the problem of power, language, the usological aspect, the tilted selection, to mention but a few), which is what I like, but at the same time this show will not be able to bring all those topics to the surface, let alone to some sort of fruition. It will remain a proposition. But I’m hoping it instigates discussions further down the line, that these issues will be picked up and developed in the future—such as ontological questions and how to apply modes of use to craft and how it can stir a vernacular that feeds into the discourses about contemporary craft. I want to stir the discourse in the field of crafts, this I find crucial.

I interpret your interest in magic in part as a way to explicitly de-rationalize exhibition-making. Invoking the magical is a form of countermeasure against binary models of object identification (it’s either this or that): magical thinking lets objects have multiple—not necessarily knowable—definitions; magical thinking makes room for the totemic, and the animist … and suddenly, there is a metaphysical elephant in the room. This opens up new curatorial possibilities: how did your co-curators react to that, and how do you intend to explain these possibilities to the public?

Marianne Zamecznik: Work on magic means authorizing a multiplicity of meanings as opposed to the safe kind of knowledge that rational thinking aims to describe, as you say, in the binary scheme “true/untrue,” which usually ends with the imposition by the stronger culture. Destabilizing this metaphysics and expanding the horizon of possibilities (thanks to epistemological tools such as the one that magic’s tradition can lend us) is an act of “speculative curating” that comes from an awareness that there can be several points of view, possible descriptions, itineraries, resonances etc. It means to give space to the other (public or co-curator) and to the object of your curating, so to speak. This emphasis on a polytheism of value is not a generic evaluation of the possibility of knowledge, but a strategy to reinforce individual experiences through a “re-enchantment of the world.”[2]I would say that this “speculative curating” is about the object and its internal diversity, and I think the other curators found this aspect interesting. Although we didn’t talk about the term “speculative curating,” nor the title of the show, Magic Language, I got a feeling that they appreciated this aspect of the project.

Explaining this aspect to the public might happen in the way that visitors would pick up the catalog and read the curators’ statements, following the reasoning for each object, exposing the gaps between the stories, and hopefully picking up on the subjective voices in them, and from that understand that any other description or reasoning, such as their own, could have stood in their place.

But the exhibition did not need the catalog to be read; the works themselves spoke to the viewer directly who, in their minds, might organize the works in any other possible constellation than the laid-out order (following the numbers provided). I would hope that the viewers (or at least their subconscious) would pick up on the several possible routes in the loose placement within the order, given the somewhat random juxtapositions that happened on that plinth.

On September 9, 2015, just as you received the last question, you actually opened the show, and I came to visit the next day. Looking at the objects in the flesh—and their powerful arrangement along a single, broken line—I better understood one important aspect of Chinese Whispers: how difficult it was for the five curators to refrain from considering the object they’d just received with the wealth of intellectual instruments at their disposal. They had to force themselves to look at it from a formal/material—almost pre-linguistic—point of view. For example, when your co-curator Agnieszka Knap received House 4, by Maria Nuutinen, she had to think of it not as a representation of a typical house built for soldiers after World War II, but as an enameled surface that possibly looked like a container. “I’d do an exercise,” she writes in the exhibition booklet, “where I imagine that I’ve never seen a house before” (her answer to that object was a series of mixed media containers by Maki Akamoto.)

This procedure for connecting craft objects makes the history of object making and their interpretation secondary to other fleeting and subjective associations. It requires that curators and visitors unlearn some of what they know, and then look at the way things resonate together. Is that your great hope for unleashing the power of craft? To favor experience over knowledge, and let objects “speak for themselves”? Are you not taking a huge gamble on your public’s capacity to see the subtle stories that you have woven together across five countries?

Marianne Zamecznik: First off, to encourage really looking at things and trying to unlearn some truths that have been passed down to us is in my opinion a legit reason to make shows. The unleashing of hidden powers in this manner isn’t necessarily beneficial exclusively to the field of crafts—it could be useful in any other field. But I wouldn’t say it’s about favoring experience over knowledge. It is about rehashing knowledge, asking stupid questions, turning things on their head in order to look again, to know more. I have a hard time freeing myself from the Enlightenment ideal; still aiming for some sort of progress.

As for the viewer’s experience: What do I know about the knowledge of others? Not so much. I can tell a story—write it down or make an explanation using a number of pedagogical tools, but in the end I have very little control when it comes to the experience of the viewer. Communicating with others is always a gamble, to use your phrase. But I happen to like gambling, for sports. What I find interesting is to set up a sort of loose grid or scheme, which allows for the co-authorship of others, where there is room for randomness, overlaps, serendipitous connections, alterations. In this case, the scheme is easy to grasp if one picks up the booklet or talks to the guide. The viewer doesn’t really need to have a specific knowledge to be able to grasp the method; the Chinese whispers, as adapted to a curatorial set of rules, is easy enough to get your head around. Once viewers learn this, they can assess whether they think the connections between the works make sense, they can make other connections, create another order within the selection of objects in front of them. They are invited to play along. As a viewer myself, I enjoy being engaged in the storytelling, I like to have access to the scheme or grid “behind” the show and to consider the conditions of the show while seeing the show. Sometimes it can be too didactic or stupid, so much so that it ruins the experience and I just walk away from the exhibition, from the works, without having experienced anything but indignation. In my eyes, that is the biggest gamble when making shows like this—it’s what would keep me awake at night.

Marianne Zamecznik is an artist, curator, exhibition designer, and recently appointed director of the art festival Oslo Open. Following her formal arts education at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, she co-founded the cultural outreach program and itinerant exhibition venture Simon Says in 2002. Zamecznik was also Managing and Program Director at 0047, an independent exhibition and residency organization focused on art, architecture, and collaboration, between 2004 and 2010. Recent independent curatorial projects include A Midsummer Night’s Scream at De Appel in Amsterdam, magic language///game of whispers at Revelations ll in Paris, and Secondo Stile/Tent at Cité des Arts in Paris. She is part of the Institute of Usership, a joint research project at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Zamecznik constitutes half of ZAMAAS, an exhibition design studio established together with artist Øystein Aasan in Berlin.

In her recent piece for The Atlantic, Victoria Clayton refers to the “problem” of needlessly complex writing in academia. But this complexity is only a problem for those who don’t see a need for it. And nobody needs complexity more than academics.

Big ideas need big words to express them. Concepts must be transcended, boundaries must be transgressed, paradigms must be reconceptualized. What good is knowing these words if you never get to use them? Where’s the fun in writing a paper if you can’t stick the word “doppelgänger” in there somewhere?

Look, most universities don’t allow smoking indoors anymore. The “old book smell” of the library has been replaced by the sterile digital screen. The dominion of the elbow patch has been co-opted by hipster undergraduates. Words are all that academics have left. If they want to hegemonize and dichotomize, just let them … who are they hurting, anyway?

Daphne Krinos is a Greek jeweler living in London and taking full advantage of showing her work in a variety of venues there. She has a solo show in the US at Patina Gallery this month. A really active and intelligent maker, she answered some questions for us about her background and process.

Bonnie Levine: Tell us about your background and how you came to be a jewelry designer and maker.

Daphne Krinos: I was born and grew up in Greece, where I started making things at an early age. I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time with my beloved grandfather, who, besides being a Nobel Prize laureate, enjoyed constructing funny things using all sorts of materials. He also taught me to love museums and ancient artifacts and it was always the glowing bits of gold and colored gemstones that appealed to and attracted me.

I had a strong desire to leave Greece at the end of school, and after seven years of military rule and knowing I wanted to go to art college, I came to London. It was during my first foundation year that I decided to study jewelry design.

I graduated after four years, and after a very successful degree show I decided to try and set up my own studio. I was lucky enough to get help from the Crafts Council, and that is how I bought most of my tools.

I also taught part-time in many colleges, to supplement my income, which really helped in the beginning.

Are there references to your native Greece in your work? Can you describe where you live and work now, and how this influences your work?

Daphne Krinos: Although I left Greece a long time ago, it is and will always be with me. The intensity of light, the colors of summer, the beautiful gold treasures in the museums, I think it all somehow manages to surface in a lot of my pieces.

I have been living in London for over 30 years now and my studio is at home in East London, which is a very lively area, where many artists work. I am also near the City of London, which is rapidly expanding. I take many photos of building sites, and these images somehow crop up in many of my pieces. I have always been attracted by manmade structures and industrial sites, as well as cities, and the outskirts is where one finds these. Street art is often a source of inspiration, although this is not directly evident in my work.

Your new exhibition at Patina Gallery is called Anthracite. How is anthracite, a compact variety of coal, a metaphor for your jewelry? What work will you be presenting?

Daphne Krinos: I guess the name derived from the dark color I use on the silver pieces I make. I have made several works using heavy oxidization or hard ruthenium and rhodium plating, which gives a graphic quality to my jewelry. This look is what I have become more known for. I also often use small diamonds to highlight specific points on certain works, and maybe the fact they derived from coal has contributed to the title Patina chose to give my show.

You work primarily in gold, heavily oxidized silver, and semiprecious gemstones like amethyst, citrine, beryl, and aquamarine. What attracts you to these particular stones? Have you ever experimented with other materials?
 
Daphne Krinos: I love translucent stones. There is something magical about seeing light through all the different colors, and quite a few of them somehow become more vibrant when framed in black. (I am incredibly particular about colors when deciding which stones will work with dark metal and which with gold. I spend ages looking at them and trying them out with samples of metal before I design anything).

Beryls have always appealed to me. They can be very subtle but also sometimes with beautiful inclusions. Amethyst and citrine is quartz, and often intensely colored. They work well with black. But I do not let stones restrict what I make. I am just attracted to them, sometimes by their inclusions or shapes, and I seem to have a large collection!

I have used other materials in my work, but somehow I always return to using stones. About 10 years ago I made a collection of production pieces using images, printed text, acrylic, and acetate. I thoroughly enjoyed working in different media, but I soon realized that what I loved most about those works was designing them and making the prototypes.

I would love to have more time to experiment with all sorts of materials and learn new techniques, but finding the time is a big problem: I work mostly with no help, and that is time-consuming. What spare time I have is spent doing admin or working for Studio Fusion Gallery and the other collectives I am part of, so there is no window for playing around with ideas.

You’ve said it’s important that your jewelry be easy to wear and comfortable, and you enjoy the challenges this presents to the creative process. What are those challenges?

Daphne Krinos: Shortly after I left college, I designed and made pieces that probably looked better on a box frame hung on a wall than on the body, mainly because they would not sit properly or were too large. Over the years, I have had to learn that weight as well as scale has to be taken into account in making a piece that will sell easily. I have to make a living from selling what I make, and I try to see this in a positive way.

Describe your process and how your pieces come to life. Do you start with a sketch, a stone, or nothing at all?

Daphne Krinos: It is not always the same way. I hardly ever draw, and this goes back to my early training: I was encouraged to make models and mockups, and this made perfect sense to me, because jewelry is three-dimensional. So this is what I did in the beginning. Over the years I have developed the habit of working directly in my chosen materials in order to resolve a design. This can be incredibly costly, particularly with gold (but I have learned a lot about recycling it!).

I have been known to design jewelry using stones as my design brief. It is often a helpful starting point for new work. When I was studying, I always worked with specific design projects, but after college I had to find ways of creating my own, and a stone of a particular color or shape can be that beginning point.

Sometimes, however, I start with an abstract idea in my head, which is possibly the culmination of lots of different things I have been looking at or have photographed. In the majority of cases, it is not until quite a long time after I have made the piece that I can identify where a particular design evolved from.

I do sketch ideas, but these are very early references to particular designs and I very rarely refer to them once I have started making.

You’ve been a successful maker for 25 years, with pieces in many noted collections and museums. How has your work evolved over time?

Daphne Krinos: Moving my work forward has been an incredibly important part of my practice. My jewelry has changed a great deal since I started making. I see so much work by several well-known designers that revolves around the same idea, and although I understand this is often because that particular idea sells well, I am completely opposed to doing it myself. I have always tried to push myself forward. Sometimes this happens when I notice copies of my designs. I see it as a sign to move on. Or I get over certain ideas and a look, and want to see what I can do next. I do not like staying in the same place. But at the same time I have to be careful not to be too different too suddenly: I have found in the past that people come to my shows looking for what they have seen before, so now I try to make the transition a little smoother. Having said this, I believe that in my work there are several elements that have always been there and are recognizably my own. And I find this the best compliment when people see it and tell me about it.

Have you seen a change in what customers and collectors are buying? Where do you see the field of contemporary jewelry going?

Daphne Krinos: I have noticed that buyers and collectors are more interested in work that looks different from what I would call mainstream jewelry. I keep hearing the same comments here in the UK: so much looks the same, so much is “average.” This may well have a lot to do with the fact that new graduates have a much tougher time selling their work. There are no grants available in the UK, and at the same time most specialist galleries have closed down, so there are no places to show more adventurous work. Therefore a lot of young makers concentrate on developing more commercial work. This has possibly created a thirst for more “special” jewelry.

I would like to hope that contemporary studio jewelry will go on and on with more exciting work emerging for years to come. There is evidence that the public is appreciative of handmade objects, and apparently the demand is growing. These are undoubtedly very different times from when I came out of art college, and maybe showing these works has to change as well, certainly here in the UK.

In addition to being a maker, you’re a co-director of the Studio Fusion Gallery in London and a member of the contemporary jewelry collective, COSMIMA. Tell us about these ventures and your role in them.

Daphne Krinos: I was asked to join Studio Fusion Gallery in the OXO Tower just over two years ago. This is a small specialist gallery that has survived for 18 years with no financial support from any institution, which is incredibly admirable. It is run as a cooperative by people who are all makers themselves. We understand the field and try to support artist jewelers, while at the same time making sure we manage to keep afloat, which is not always easy. So we try to have a good balance of adventurous and more challenging work through special small exhibitions and jewelry that we know will sell in the part of London the gallery is situated in. It has been a learning experience for me, and rewarding, and it has certainly given me a better understanding of what people like to buy.

COSMIMA is a collective that was set up 11 years ago by a group of five studio jewelers (me being one of them). The idea was to have an annual short exhibition in a rented gallery space, with a few invited makers as our guests: Two more jewelers who work in different (nonprecious) media, and two silversmiths. We have grown from strength to strength, and our annual show is now a very successful event in the jewelry calendar. We have worked with some of the UK’s most notable silversmiths and jewelers, and we all thoroughly enjoy organizing it every year. Again, I have learned a great deal about putting on a show.

I am also part of another collective called WEAR IT OUT. We are four members, all jewelers, and we rent a pop-up shop every year for two months on Columbia Road, where there is a famous Sunday flower market. Again, it has been incredibly interesting for me to see how different the clientele can be from one part of London to another. This is an area where there are many younger professional people, who are maybe more interested in what is fashionable or trendy, who are not familiar with what we call studio jewelry, but they will be our future clientele and we have to make them aware that we exist. It is more and more the way makers operate here in the UK.

What advice would you give to young, emerging artists today about the key to a long and rewarding career as a maker?

Daphne Krinos: Don’t be afraid to be adventurous and do not compromise easily. Set your goals high. Competition is not bad. It keeps you on your toes. Try to be different from the crowd and it will pay off. Work with a few established designer-makers; you will learn an awful lot. Team together with other makers and form collectives/groups, where you can use ideas and skills to good effect and find opportunities to show your work. And learn how to properly price your work.

Thank you very much.

AJF has decided to begin posting the prices of pieces in the gallery shows we are highlighting each month. For this show, the price range is between $535 and $12,800.

1.
For this final installment of the three-part series Beyond Unwearable, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the makers from my prior articles to give a richer view of the content of this third and final piece. In the first segment, we viewed Julia Heineccius’s Divisible installation, a piece that straddles installation art, a light form of participatory art, and sensitivities to architectural space, all while remaining rooted in the field of metalsmithing and jewelry. Heineccius’s considerations of the body moving through space, the subtleties of perception and peripheral vision, and her regard for the activation of a work with nothing more than the movement of the body through space ensure that this piece could have taken no other format but that of installation art. It divorces itself from wearable work while still retaining ties to our field through material and acknowledgment of the body as the “site” of action.

In the second segment, I paired Amelia Toelke’s Dragonfruit and Kristi Sword’s Quick Count Drawings to examine the surface, luster, and tactility of wall-based works that express the optical qualities of jewelry. Using symbols, surfaces, and construction techniques from the field of jewelry, these works utilize the language of adornment and the decorative object in ways that wearable work could not. A “jewelry lens” turned inward on the gallery itself, Toelke and Sword’s individual works adorn the body of the gallery and turn visitors into accessory witnesses to what it looks like to be worn, adorned, and decorated on a scale that dwarfs the body and celebrates space itself.

I hope this final installment brings a sense of conclusion to the series, a finale of sorts that opens the flood gates for more making, more exploration, and more conversation around the complex diversity with which emerging makers in our field are making. This is not a call for the creation of less wearable work or more jewelers-turned-sculptors, but rather a call to investigate the depth of content that is at the core of our field and accept expansive methods of making as critical to the development of craft.

2.
The most “jewelry-based” maker in this series is Lyndsay Rice. Her newest body of work, False Plumage, is a departure from her large-scale wearable works in format, but closely related to them in content. Rice’s previous wearable works, specifically a body of jewelry pieces titled Color Constructions, borrow patterned segments from Alexander McQueen’s 2010 garment collection that are then recolored, abstracted, and layered, paying subtle homage to McQueen’s iconography of insects, animal skins, and camouflage. If colors and patterns in the animal and insect kingdoms are used as an attractant or warning symbol, Rice’s oversized, glittered, and pop-culture-colored symbols seek to reposition what it means to attract in the contemporary moment.

False Plumage takes the strongest elements in Color Constructions and magnifies them. If ornamentation in nature is about the necessity of attracting mates or warning predators, what happens when ornamentation outgrows the body and infiltrates the environment around you? And what can an oversaturation of pattern, color, and ornamentation imply? Draping off of the wall in candy-colored sheets, fragmented textile patterns, now cut in thick paper, feel lush and overbearing. Subtle glints of neon and pastel hide inches below the natural recesses of the outer surface. The proliferation of cloned patterns seems to cover more of the gallery environment with each glance, mirroring nature’s unrelenting reproductive agenda.

The natural bends, flourishes, and arcs of the paper are softer than you expect and, similarly to Julia Heneccius’s net in Divisible and Kristi Sword’s Quick Count Drawings, the colored and patterned segments respond to your movements through the space by trembling and nudging into one another. The wall becomes an overactivated version of her wearable work, casting the viewer in the role of prey, to be enticed inward and enveloped inside thick layering. Where Rice’s Color Constructions emphasize beauty, adornment, and sexual reproduction, False Plumage extends beyond a single reference. It is at once an attractant and a threat; the uncomfortable density and blurring of color and shape feel beautiful, disorienting, and false. If there is a single work to exemplify the contradictory effects of ornamentation, this is it.

3.
As an emerging maker myself, I see the challenges of having a practice that cannot be easily defined. Jewelry and metalsmithing as a field can feel like a closed circuit for emerging makers when it pushes tradition, trend, and repetition over expansiveness. Is a jewelry work that resides upon the body inherently more relevant to our conversation than an installation-based work that explores human adornment, the body, or the history of our field? I argue it is not. Jewelers have something singular to say about the body, and about ornamentation, whether they do it on walls or on skin. While installation art has a rich and long history of its own, absorbing and repurposing installation-based methods of making is new to the jewelry field. The body, ornamentation, and our shifting perception of objects are at the crux of both wearable and installation works. Emerging makers—such as Heineccius, Toelke, Sword, and Rice—are using their understanding of body, scale, and adornment, and applying it to new explorations on walls, on floors, in spaces. The ability to view their works as jewelry, by expanding our notions of what jewelry can be, lets us develop new ways of experiencing our field as a whole. They are “question seekers,” looking for their questions and answers of how, why, and what it means to ornament in a multitude of media for the betterment of creative practice as a whole. The four makers represented in Beyond Unwearable are challenging the conversations of jewelry and wearability in diverse ways, each with their own questions for “you”: the viewer, the critic, the academic, the maker. In the quest to cultivate new conversations, I hope you answer the questions they pose with your own critical works, writings, and explorations.

The husband-and-wife team of Tatjana and Peter Panyoczki has collaborated on an exhibition at Avid Gallery using the theme of the box. He is a painter, and she is a jeweler, so they each brought their talents to the object and came up with an imaginative collaboration. They have been married for many years and I was curious how this project affected them.

Susan Cummins: Can you tell us the stories of your background? Where were you born and raised, and where did you go to study? Where do you live now?

Peter Panyoczki: I am a New Zealand artist based in Kaiwaka. Born in Hungary in 1953, I escaped with my parents after the revolution in 1956 to Switzerland. I studied literature and art history at the University of Zurich and received an MA in 1980. I taught at Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, and in Zurich. I worked in studios in Barcelona, Vienna, Budapest, and Rotterdam, and have exhibited internationally since 1979. Since 1995, I have been living in New Zealand with my wife Tatjana and our son Janos, where I initiated a synergetic project, the Kaipara Foundation.

Tatjana Panyoczki: I was born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1969. My family traveled to New Zealand by boat when I was three years old and returned to Switzerland six years later. There, I trained as a wig maker and make-up artist in theater. After working in London for a few years, I returned to New Zealand where I studied 3D design in Auckland. Since 1998, we have lived in a small rural community in the north of New Zealand.

Where and when did you meet?

Tatjana and Peter: We met in Zurich in early 1991, thanks to Csibi, a Husky puppy.

How would you describe your own artwork? What ideas are you working on? What materials do you work with?

Peter Panyoczki: I describe my work as a method of navigation in a field of relations embracing space, time, and my continuously changing psyche. I orient myself by playfully arranging materials, on canvas and other membranes. I lift familiar things to the light and into a wider field of vision. The things that have always been there push abruptly into consciousness. I don't create anything new, just maybe a new way of seeing through things into the invisible.

Tatjana Panyoczki: My work is meant to be worn. Form, surface textures, and the body are key elements in my visual language; finding the balance between them is the goal. I have become a lot more intuitive over the years and let unfamiliar materials lead me astray on experimental journeys. These escapes teach me a lot about myself and my practice, and sometimes even a good piece is made, but I love returning to metals, my core and, I guess, my comfort zone.

Do you critique each other’s work and share ideas? Are your studios near each other?

Tatjana and Peter: Since we both have separate studios at home, we regularly communicate about our creative processes and often have inspiring critique sessions.

In the press release for the show, it states that you reinterpreted the concept of Gertrude Stein’s “A rose is a rose is a rose” by naming your show ABOXISABOXISABOX. Have you read a lot of Gertrude Stein’s writings, or did you just like the idea of the phrase?

Tatjana and Peter: We have come across Gertrude Stein's writings, even though we can't say we know them intimately, but the "rose is a rose..." has always been intriguing. We brought our reinterpretation into play because it expresses pretty much our intention. Here is our statement, which we have written for the exhibition:

A box is a container for things. It embraces and protects them, forming an outer space. By itself a box is a spatial membrane with a void inside. This void has potential.

As a couple living and working together, creating our own sphere—a little universe, a "box." By experimenting to amalgamate our diverse practices, we find surprising results; that would not happen when working alone. The cross-fertilisation of ideas and techniques opens new avenues to explore. It's a beautiful, challenging adventure and learning curve. We have shared ideas, contemplated on our work, given each other input for many years. Now our marks meet in this body of work.

We deal with boxes in our everyday life. We send our objects away in boxes, receive things in boxes. Boxes turn into charismatic objects, forming their own history. This is the starting point for our collaborative work: to acknowledge their aesthetic value, to play with the membrane of a three-dimensional shape—turning the hierarchy upside down. The membrane, the box itself, becomes a value in its own right.

"A box is a box is a box." Following Gertrude Stein's notion, a box reduced to its "boxness" is void of any metaphoric content. Now it starts gathering new meaning all over again.

Tell us about the concept of ABOXISABOXISABOX. Give us an example of how you worked together on a piece.

Tatjana Panyoczki: As described in our statement, the starting point was the recycled boxes I send my work around all over the place (as do many other jewelers), they circulate, gather layers of time and place, the marks of other artists. I find them beautiful and started collecting them. Peter builds boxes/crates for his work to be sent around the world. This was our common ground where we started with our collaborative investigation of ABOXISABOXISABOX. So we made boxes together, literally four handed on some of them, other pieces evolved separately and allowed cross-fertilization to come into play.

Did your collaboration lead to new ideas for your individual practices?

Peter Panyoczki: Because we had to leave our usual practices, there was for both of us certainly a portion of adventure into unknown territories involved. I had to redimension my work, i.e. work on a much smaller scale. Over all, there was lots of playfulness involved in our collaborative work, definitely opening up doors for future concepts and ideas in our individual practices, too.

Tatjana Panyoczki: It was really stimulating not having to think “jewelry” for a change, so it opened up a whole new dimension for me, particularly in terms of scale, which naturally led to new ideas and urges to translate back into wearable pieces.

Do you think you will try this collaboration again sometime? Did it create a strain in your relationship?

Peter Panyoczki: On the contrary, this was a great experience for us, showing our closeness and our similar aesthetic views. Our collaboration was remarkably harmonious, which should not be taken for granted when a couple works together.

Tatjana Panyoczki: One would think that being a couple of 25 years, living and raising a son together, it would come easy. And it did … it came down to healthy communication skills and similar aesthetic values.

Letting go of individual authorship and egos. Collaborating is a very humbling and humanizing form of the creative process, which I would recommend doing from time to time.

How would you describe the difference between showing as a painter and showing as a jeweler?

Peter Panyoczki: Showing as a painter falls (or has been falling) under a different category, because of the traditional perception differences, i.e. art and craft. Of course, there has been in the last years lots of discussions and efforts in rectifying these two realms, putting them under the same "umbrella." This definitely should be the case! We have come across this problem while pricing our work. The so-called "fine arts" are always priced higher than "craft." Quality, work input, materials have nothing to do with their value. They are just by definition two different pairs of shoes. It is time to adjust them.

Tatjana Panyoczki: AVID Gallery shows objects and applied art; they have represented my work for years. Judith Carswell, the owner/director, approached me about a collaborative show with Peter, something quite new for AVID. She gave us total freedom and a lot of trust in merging our practices. We all understood from the beginning it wasn’t going to be a show with Peter’s two-dimensional work on the walls and my jewelry in cabinets. It was a wonderful collaborative process working with AVID, a dream for every artist.

Have you seen, heard, or read anything you can recommend to AJF readers?

We recently watched a documentary filmed by Reto Caduff, The Visual Language of Herbert Matter. A portrait of an unsung hero, but an incredible, influential creative genius (Pixiu Films, 2011).

Thank you!

Georgetown Trailer Park Mall, Seattle, Washington, 2015

My head is routinely turned by overstuffed second-hand stores when I’m material shopping. I appreciate that not everyone wants their material bearing the kind of message that recycled objects convey, but if you’re after rare threads, specialist tools, or recycled metals, combing through castoffs at the thrift store or outdoor market is often the best bet. Enter Seattle’s Georgetown Trailer Park Mall. In the midst of a biker community, Georgetown boasts rail yards to the north and a freeway that hugs the eastern border so closely that in part it looms overhead, and it’s cut off from the river on the western side by yet another freeway sliding south. Then there’s the airport, dead south, whose air traffic patterns routinely interrupt conversation in the streets. Across the road from an old brewery building or two, the car park of Star Brass Works Lounge—what we back home would call a pub—seems a logical place for a random assortment of goods—those for sale and the trailers housing the wares. The “mall” itself is hemmed into a right angle between semi-industrial buildings: these edge a triangular vortex into which fragments seem to naturally pool. It’s just as well this mall sits happily in its concrete and tarmac location as, should it choose to move on, I strongly suspect the stuff would continue to collect.

Mexican artist and educator Mariana Acosta, recently featured in DesignMilk, launched the Precious Waste project as a means to explore the quality of “preciousness” in an academic setting. Acosta leads industrial and graphic design students at Mexico’s Universidad Gestalt de Diseño through an investigative process of sourcing waste materials and transforming them into sleek, thoughtfully crafted wearable pieces. Discarded milk containers, VHS videotape, and egg cartons are imbued with new value once they’re reengineered and presented as art jewelry.

The Precious Waste project itself been a way for Acosta to repurpose the resources available to her. She describes on the project’s website how she had to abandon her dream of staying in the US after graduate school and return to Mexico, where contemporary jewelry isn’t as widely recognized as an artistic discipline. She describes why she made the choice to work with waste materials: “Because they were all I had left as working materials after graduating from a very prestigious but also pricey school. So I decided to make lemonade with the lemons I had, or as I named my toilet paper cardboard rolls jewelry series When Life Gives You Shit, Use It as Fertilizer.”