Klimt02 Gallery, in Barcelona, Spain, is having an exhibition this month with Mari Ishikawa. Mari is Japanese but trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and now lives there. She was a Herbert Hofmann awardee in 2000 and the Elizabeth R. Raphael Founder Prize winner last year. Mari has shown far and wide and brings her special point of view to the jewelry she makes. Her show Landscape became an opportunity for an interview this month.
Susan Cummins: Can you tell me the story of how you discovered that you wanted to be a jeweler?
Mari Ishikawa: I worked as an interior designer in Japan. It was quite interesting, but the range was too limited. Jewelry gives me more artistic freedom. At the same time, the relationship that exists between the object, the person who wears it, and me is more personal and more intense in jewelry.