zoom
steel, wood, plastic, paper, glass,
feathers and found objects, from
watch faces to gun triggers.
Those interested in the com-
bination of narrative vein with
the ingenious use of natural and
found objects in the jewelry of
Nancy Worden and R iff Slcm-
mons—both in the
M A D
collec-
tion and both mentored by Ra-
mona Solberg—will find much to
explore and enjoy in two books
that convey the technical com-
plexity and psychological depth
these artists have added to the
direction pioneered by Solberg.
The works in
Loud Bones,
the
catalog of Worden’s recent 30-
year retrospective, are primarily
neckpieces, such as
The Good
Omen
©, remarkable for their
size and for the bold mixture of
wildly disparate elements, com-
bined by Worden through a
variety of rigorous techniques
to convey personal and political
meanings relating to conflict
and resolution. Insights into the
turbulent life experience ex-
pressed in Worden’s audacious
works are offered by an art his-
torian and a law professor who
happens to be an authority on
conflict resolution.
Poetry, visual and verbal,
is at the heart of
Hands of the He-
roes,
a limited-edition book by
Slemmons based on a 1987-91
series: hand-shaped tributes to
43 public personages, among
them, Freud, Nabokov, Emily
Dickinson©, Anne Frank and
Marie Curie. Each identity is
suggested by the objects Slem-
mons includes within an amulet-
like 3-by-2y2-inch frame. The
eloquent hands are interspersed
with texts—fragments from the
heroes, a poem by Bruce White-
man—with ghostlike images of
some of them. Offering satisfy-
ing insight into this artist’s meth-
ods arc photos of her overflow-
ing yet still orderly worktable,
her “sketchbook, laboratory,
and active battleground for
ideas.”— B .s.
Books
Three on
Jewelry A rt
Inspired Je welry
From the Museum of Arts
and Design
By Ursula Ilse-Neuman
Museum of Arts and Design,
New York,
N Y
A C C
Editions, Woodbridge
England
$55
antiquecollectorsclub. com
Loud Bones: The Jewelry
of Nancy Worden
By Susan Noyes Platt and
Michelle LeBaron
Tacoma Art Museum
University of Washington
Press
Seattle,
w a
$40 hardcover, $24.95
paperback
washington.edu/uwpress
KifTSlemmons: Hands
of the Heroes
Essay by Mija Riedel,
Poem by Bruce Whiteman
Published by Kiff Slemmons
$40
siennagallcry.com
velvetdavinci.com
charonkransenarts.com
With artist-made contemporary
jewelry now entering the col-
lections of fine arts museums,
it seems no longer subject to
debate, if it ever was, that such
work is art. It has not been de-
batable at the Museum of Arts
and Design, which, since its
inception in 1956, has champi-
oned this field.
Inspired Jewelry,
presenting more than 200 works
from its choice collection—now
on display in its entirety in
m a d ’ s
Tiffany & Co. Founda-
tion Jewelry Gallery—confirms
the expanding boundaries of
this vital art form.
The book is organized by
decades, starting from the 1940s
and extending into the 2000s.
The works are presented dra-
matically one to a page, some-
times one to a spread, suggest-
ing that no matter how small-
scale they are in reality, they
command attention for their
original aesthetic vision and
technical virtuosity,
m a d
is
fortunate to own drawings of
particular pieces, so that with
necklaces by Herman Jiinger
and Boris Bally and brooches
by Gio Pomodoro and Jamie
Bennett, a reader can view the
work and its related drawing
on facing pages.
Ursula Ilse-Neuman, MAD’s
jewelry curator, emphasizes the
variety and global reach of art-
ist-made jewelry and sketches
its major impulses or inspira-
tions—modernist, surrealist,
sculptural, organic, minimalist,
conceptual, textural, painterly,
narrative, technological, and
more. What is most striking is
the extraordinary diversity of
materials jewelers employ be-
yond precious metals and gem-
stones—aluminum, stainless
022 american craft apr/may io
Worden photo Rex Rystedt /Slemmons photo Rod Slemmons.
