Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
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35 ORNAMENT 38.1.2015 KLAUS SPIES: JEWELRY RAJ KOMMINENI: GLASS DONALD FRIEDLICH: JEWELRY Museum of Glass, New York, just to name a few. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Friedlich in 2003 was the first jeweler to be named Artist-in-Residence at The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass. His awards have been many and among them is recipient of the Ornament Magazine Award for Excellence at the 2012 Smithsonian Craft Show. Glass artist Raj Kommineni, from Massachusetts, focuses on vessels, sculptures, marbles, and paperweights. In 2003, after graduating from the University of Massachusetts, he established Kommineni Art Glass for the sole production of his small objects. His work is published in The Encyclopedia of Modern Marbles, Spheres & Orbs by Mark Block and Glass Line. Other glass artists at this year's show include Brian Becher, Matthew Fine, Carrie Gustafson, Michael Schunke and Josie Gluck, Fred Kaemmer, Amber Marshall, Joyce Roessler, and Boyd Sugiki. Decorative fiber is a difficult practice and until recently not well recognized, but New Mexico artist Mical Aloni creates astonishing embroidered wall pieces. Visually hypnotic, her work seemingly draws from dreamscapes that remain well hidden from our daily life experiences. She learned embroidery as a young girl living on an agricultural kibbutz in Israel, where girls were expected to sew and make traditional embroidery. Vicki Essig, Leah Evans, Meg Little, Wence Martinez, and Claudia Mills are also artists in this category. Part of the importance of shows like the Smithsonian is the degree to which artists still honor their historical antecedents. Even though the contemporary craft movement places a high value on self-expression and individuality, it also references the long ancient tradition of the handcrafted object. It is an artform that transmits itself directly and immediately, with an inherent simplicity and purity inherent to its grounding in functionality. To attend the Smithsonian Craft Show is to share in the vital connections made between the hand, the heart and the mind. The handmade art found here is beautiful not despite its usefulness but because of it.