All Photos By Gail
In Beth Lipman’s Margin For Error (2014) an infant Crib and an adult Cradle are oriented to evoke the universal journey from birth to death. The crib tilts downward, sinking slowly into the floor, propelling its inhabitant toward childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age, at which point the cradle awaits occupation.
Continue reading Margin for Error: Glass Crib and Cradle By Beth Lipman
All Photos By Gail
Patti Warashina’s Kilns series subversively undermined the macho “cult of the kiln:” a phrase used to coin the sexist culture that surrounded kiln-building during the mid-twentieth century. As a ceramics student at the University of Washington, Warashina observed that kiln-building lessons were directed towards men, while surface decoration was the jurisdiction of women. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Patti Warashina, Gold Finger
All Photos By Gail
Kiff Slemmons‘ neckpiece Circumspect (2003) is an object that does what it is and is what it does. Composed of lenses and mirrors collected and categorized for a purpose that the collecting itself reveals, it is both a tool of taxonomic assessment and a record of a taxonomic class of useful and evocative things.
Denying the role of jewelry as something only to be looked at, it meets and counters the gaze — returning agency to those being seen. It also asks us to emulate what it facilitates: the art of careful looking as a way of understanding.
Photographed in the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan.
Photos By Gail
In 1968, Arline Fisch visited the Gold Museum in Lima, Peru, where she came across a tiny pre-Columbian fragment of woven gold. This trip marked a pivotal point in her artistic practice, resulting in her unique, textile-derived approach to jewelry.  Copper Wire Cuff, in which the artist  ran copper wire through a knitting machine as if it were a strand of yarn, is an example of the type of work inspired by this encounter.
Cuff Worn By Model (1985)
The melding of textile technique and body ornament reflects the confluence of a broader range of interests and pursuits, including the artists’s introduction to weaving at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and her self-directed study of jewelry in museum collections worldwide.
Photographed at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan.
All Photos By Gail
In 1970, Marvin Lipofsky started a practice of traveling to glass factories around the world to learn from and collaborate with glass masters. He always sought to infuse the works he made with local culture, primarily through symbolic color.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Marvin Lipofsky, Czech Flowers #6