Editor’s Picks
Smithsonian Craft Show 2024
Patrick R. Benesh-Liu brings readers on a tour of the Smithsonian Craft Show, and delves into the people whose volunteered time makes the show possible. He makes the argument that we cannot take good things for granted, and that by investing our time and presence, we can preserve and grow those good things.
AMY NGUYEN, WEARABLE ART.
Ornament Celebrates
Our 50th Anniversary
Volume 45, No. 1
Table of Contents
Features
Joyce J. Scott.
Beading Life, Telling Stories
Prehistoric Jewelry of the Americas.
Ode to Ebendorf.
Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee!
Art & Sole.
Speaking With Your Feet
La Frontera.
Where Time and Place Meet
Departments
Showcase.
Jeanie Pratt: Process
Showcase.
“Art & Sole”
Reimagining Fashion.
Refashioning. CFGNY & Wataru Tominaga
Fashion For the 21st Century
Building Community.
SNAG Conference 2024. Breaking Borders
JOYCE J. SCOTT
Karen Searle celebrates another big fifty, with Joyce J. Scott’s retrospective exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Having been an artist “since she was in utero”, Scott’s work has been an incredible tapestry, using beads as the medium for expressing the African-American voice. A master storyteller, Scott has encouraged plenty of conversation with her beaded jewelry, sculpture and installations.
BOB EBENDORF
Ashley Callahan gives one of the father’s of contemporary art jewelry his due, celebrating fifty years of Bob Ebendorf’s work from the generous Porter • Price Collection, donated recently to the Mint Museum. From being a dedicated educator to his pioneering use of found objects and alternative materials, Ebendorf has inspired joy and contemplation.
“LA FRONTERA”
Patrick R. Benesh-Liu navigates shifting perspectives as he writes the story of how the exhibition “La Frontera” was organized for its third iteration. Examining the issue of the US-Mexico border from many different, personal takes, this fascinating show continues to reinvent itself and express new messages.
The Process of Becoming
We Share with You the Jewelry Collection of the late Ornament Coeditor, Carolyn L.E. Benesh, who forged strong and intimate bonds with many of the artists whose work she purchased.
Articles, Past and Present
The Expression of the Handmade Makes Itself Felt through Genuineness.
What was Made Took a Combination of Skill and Ingenuity, Birthed From That Mysterious Dark Place of Imagination.
Wearable Art
It came about as a nexus in the 60s and 70s, referencing a freeform fusion of heretofore two-dimensional art and applying it to the canvas of the human being. These clothes as costume and costume as clothes birthed off a movement that still has its adherents even now, in the contemporary age.
Jewelry has had to find itself in the Modernist age, transcending the fine jewelry of wealth at the turn of the century, and reaching mid-century the abstracted explorations of material, composition, and storytelling that would yield to the contemporary art jewelry movement. Today, contemporary art jewelry remains a creatively vibrant field, a cross-disciplinary cooperation that branches off into academic work and that sold at craft shows.
We bring you the broad spectrum of human self-expression in wearable art, from the ancient and the ethnic, to the contemporary. Both here in the United States, and abroad.
Here are a few of the jewelers and clothing makers in the wearable art community for your enjoyment. We will continue to rotate this selection each month, so you will always find superlative new work to explore.
AMY NGUYEN, SHIBORI DYED CLOTHING
KEN LOEBER & DONA LOOK, JEWELRY
BIBA SCHUTZ, JEWELRY
JANICE KISSINGER, HAND-DYED FELTED CLOTHING
K. RILEY, HANDMADE BLOCK-PRINT CLOTHING
JUDITH KINGHORN, JEWELRY
Intelligent Reading.
Enter a world where experience and skill cooperate with imagination and materials to create astounding objects. The spectrum of human adornment extends from tribal and folk cultures around the globe, to the rarefied heights of the fashion industry, to contemporary art jewelry and craft which seeks to explore new boundaries.
SHOP EASILY.
Having been an artist “since she was in utero”, Scott’s work has been an incredible tapestry, using beads as the medium for expressing the African-American voice.