Santa Fe’s Patina Gallery announces New Artists for the New Decade, a group exhibition introducing the works of nineteen jewelry artists new to the gallery. Ever searching for the unique essence that distinguishes works shown at Patina, owners Allison and Ivan Barnett toured this year’s shows and found artists whose works they love. As the gallery embarks on a second decade, Patina has emerged as one of the country’s premier venues for design craft and particularly, studio jewelry.

The new artists participating in this exhibition are Jacob Albee, Elena Cantacuzene, Helen Ellison-Dorion, Emanuela Duca, Janine Eisenhauer, Larry Fielder, Mary Frericks, Reiko Ishiyama, Claire Kahn, Taikyun Kim, Christy Klug, Victoria Moore, Gustav Reyes, Lauren Schlossberg, Biba Schutz, Joerg Stoffel, Achim Gersmann, Myung Urso, Kiwon Wang, Andrea Williams and Liaung-Chung Yen.
Most are from the United States, a few are Asian born and four are European.

Like all serious contemporary artists, studio jewelers work toward a unique, personal voice. Their materials have almost no limitations, since work today often employs not just precious materials, but non-precious, too. Rubber, steel, paper and wool are equally welcome in their studios. They differ from artists in other mediums only on the issue of scale, which is constrained by the demands of wearablity. This is an important difference, because it asks another quality of mastery of the artist. When considering needs of wearablity, like size, weight and balance, the jewelry artist brings an engineer’s mind to a highly aesthetic endeavor.

Korean born Myung Urso creates arresting silver and cotton pieces, tinted with ink and embellished with silken strands. Their ephemeral character reflects a sensibility that is uniquely her own, delicate, thoughtful and rich. Jacob Albee works with meteorite, combining it with 18k and gems. Gustav Reyes creates wood bracelets that explore the unique qualities of that material. Claire Kahn crochets supple precious stone and glass bead necklaces in patterns taken from snakes while Victoria Moore builds jewelry from Damascus steel and 18k gold. In this short list of artists and their materials, one can observe how far jewelry has moved from conventional notions of ornament.

While generations of museum goers have marveled at the remarkable jewelry creations indigenous to ancient Egyptians, Greeks, the Aztecs, Celts and the like, it is only fairly recently that contemporary studio jewelry has received serious attention. Important museum exhibitions in the past few years have helped introduce the art form to a wider audience. Galleries like Patina share some of this credit, too.

In 2008, Helen Drutt’s exceptional collection of unique studio pieces brought widespread, critical attention to the art form and has been featured in an exhibition that opened at the Houston Museum of Fine Art and then traveled to the Smithsonian, the Mint Museum in North Carolina and finally the Tacoma Museum of Art. In the same year, New York’s famed Metropolitan Museum opened an exhibition of jewelry by Alexander Calder, one of the 20th century’s most recognized artists who, like many of his generation, worked in metals and explored the possibilities of expressive jewelry. The art of studio jewelry continues to evolve and because of exhibitions like these, the audience for the work grows larger and better informed.

Archeological evidence suggests that self-embellishment is among the earliest forms of self-expression. It is an urge that reaches deep into the human experience, making it all the more remarkable, that after such a long history, there are still new ideas and visions for the art form among artists today. Patina is proud to represent these works.

The exhibition will open with a public reception on Friday, May 14 and will continue through
June 6, 2010.