LOOT Is Just Around the Corner

The wait is almost over, LOOT will be opening at the Museum of Arts and Design next Tuesday. For the last month I have been faithfully featuring the work that will be on view at the show next week and am still not done! Here is this week’s preview of LOOT. Tickets are still available for opening night…no jewelry lover should miss this show!

Jeremy May

Naomi McIntosh

According to McIntosh, an architect by training, she has “developed techniques in making jewellery with sculptural qualities that highlights spaces around the body.” Her latest collection of wooden necklaces called “Boundaries” employes vivid colors to highlight the forms and draw attention to areas of the body. While she describes the pieces as being “precise and very structural” they also move with the wearer and are incredibly organic.

Kelly Nedderman

Of her work the San Francisco-based Nedderman has said “I was trained primarily as a textile designer and, every time I sit down at my bench, I strive to combine my passion for metal with my passion for pattern, repetition and textures. Many of my jewelry pieces contain my own hand made paper that I have screen-printed and manipulated. They are then set under vintage eyeglass, microscope or camera lenses, which serve to protect, enhance, distort and magnify them. In this instance, the surface is contained and protected. Additional pieces have focused on bringing the surfaces to the outside, thereby creating a unique tactile experience for the wearer. The contrast between surfaces is what I find most appealing.”

Chequita Nahar

Nahar’s jewlery is made of porcelain, oak, and pine. An unusual combination for an unusual artist who believes that our background is eseential to our personalities. Nahar brings her Surinam roots to her jewlery design, thereby her collections are “inspired by a combination of traditional Surinam rituals and objects, including beads, and present-day symbolism and values.”

Kazumi Nagano

   

It is not uncommon for an artist to make jewelry out of woven gold, but no one combines them with Nihonga, a traditional Japanese painting technique. Nagano’s use of Japanese lacquer and paper thread result in pieces that are light and ethereal yet bold and beautiful.

John Moore

Angela O’Keefe

In her own words: O’Keefe, a Scottish experimental jewelry artist, works with crystals of salt. The artist studied at Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School in Florence, Italy, but found her inspiration after swimming in the Dead Sea. When she emerged from the water, she discovered that the crystals of salt that formed on her skin made her body sparkle in the sunlight as if covered by a thousand gemstones: these Dead Sea crystals were jewellery in its purest form.  She enhances the natural beauty of salt crystals by combining them with precious metals, resin, and pigment. These beautiful alchemical pieces remind us of the elemental nature of salt – a substance without which we cannot live.

Kathleen Novak Tucci

Joe Pillari

Emiko Oye

Although you might feel like a kid again wearing Oye’s jewlery made from repurposed toys and LEGOs but her collection called “reware” is all about creating “works that subtly transform the identity of mundane objects and provoke new ideas about our relationship with the environment and contemporary culture.”