Crafting Excellence: The Windgate Fellowship
Click For Larger Image
AMELIA TOELKE, 2006. ELIZABETH STAIGER, 2009. WES VALDEZ, 2011. RACHEL COLUMB, 2012. RACHAEL NYHUS, 2010. RACHELLE LIM, 2006.
RACHEL COLUMB, University of Georgia.
While answering the question, “What’s next?,” may raise feelings of uncertainty and anxiety in many college seniors, the replies offered by Windgate Fellows are full of excitement, self-discovery, adventures, travel, and often some clear-headed practicality. Since 2006 The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design annually has awarded ten graduating college seniors grants of fifteen thousand dollars to support, recognize and encourage craft practice. Known as the Windgate Fellowship, this award quickly has become one of the most prestigious given to young craftspeople. Artists working in numerous media receive awards, but of particular note for readers of Ornament are the eighteen artists who make jewelry. According to the Center’s executive director, Stephanie Moore, “The Windgate Fellowship program gives us a glimpse of the best emerging talent in the field,” and the artists featured here provide an especially vibrant and promising view.
The Center originated through an initiative of HandMade in America, an organization founded in Asheville in 1993 that encourages economic development through craft and promotes Western North Carolina as a craft hub. The Education Committee of HandMade in America commissioned a study, which took place from 1994-1995, to identify how craft, craft history and craft criticism could be better integrated into education at the university level to help elevate the recognition of craft to that of traditional fine arts. This led to the establishment of The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design in 1996 by the University of North Carolina as a regional, inter-institutional public service center. In addition to the Windgate Fellowships, the Center, now based at UNC Asheville, awards the Windgate Museum Internships and the Craft Research Fund Grants, organizes exhibitions and educational events, and produced the textbook, Makers: A History of American Studio Craft, co-authored by Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf and published by the UNC Press (2010).
In 2006, with support from the Windgate Charitable Foundation, a private family foundation established in 1993 and based in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, the Center began the Windgate Fellowship program. Each year the Center invites selected universities (over one hundred twenty in 2012) in the United States to nominate two graduating seniors with “exemplary skill in craft.” They encourage universities to consider the following criteria: “work must in some way be informed by craft process, materials, traditions and/or sensibilities; work should demonstrate a balance of content and design, as well as a mastery of materials; and applicants should demonstrate innovation and curiosity, be committed to growth of their own work, and show evidence of how their work might stimulate creative thinking or dialogue among other artists.” The nominees then complete online applications that are reviewed by a panel comprised of professionals affiliated with craft including educators, artists, curators, and gallery directors. The awards are announced in April of each year, and fellows have eighteen months to complete the activities they propose in their applications.
BRIAN FLEETWOOD, 2012.
By far the most common use for the funds is the most practical: purchasing tools and materials for studios. Recent fellow Rachel Columb (2012) explains, “My number one goal is to make sure that I have the tools and materials to keep on making jewelry no matter what.” Elizabeth Staiger (2009) notes that investing in a metalsmithing studio enabled her to keep working and have a smooth transition from “an excellent school studio” to her own studio as she began her professional career. Rachael Nyhus (2010) has similar enthusiasm for this practical application of the fellowship, sharing, “First and foremost, the Windgate Fellowship has provided me with the resources to build a studio. This studio holds not only equipment but also excitement and possibility. It is where I make and where I want to be.”
Brian Fleetwood (2012) who is relocating from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Richmond, Virginia, for graduate school, is using most of his fellowship to purchase a jewelry bench, tools and materials. Fleetwood, a member of the Muskogee (Creek) Nation, is influenced by his tribe’s traditional craft practices as well as by a personal interest in science and the history of science, and the raw materials he plans to acquire for his jewelry range from organic materials including wood, antler, bone, shell, and coral, to more industrial materials like cast iron and glass; he will form these materials into sculptural, organic shapes, creating biologically-inspired jewelry.
Another common use of the grant is to attend professional conferences, especially those offered by the Society of North American Goldsmiths [SNAG]. Columb attended the most recent SNAG conference, where she “was able to connect with other metalsmiths, learn about how the field operates on a larger scale, and also listen to an eyebrow raising talk from [dealer, historian, and critic] Garth Clark.” Other fellows have attended SOFA (the Sculpture Objects Functional Art + Design art fair), SCHMUCK (the international jewelry competition in Munich), and American Craft Council shows. Aaron Decker (2012) recently participated in the Garnet Symposium in Turnov, Czech Republic. Attending these gatherings helps the fellows develop professional contacts and encourages peer camaraderie.
Click For Larger Image
KATHLEEN JANVIER, University of Georgia. RACHAEL NYHUS, California College of the Arts. ELIZABETH STAIGER, Cleveland Institute of Art.
Rather than attending group events, Kathleen Janvier (2009) arranged for a series of one-on-one interactions by interning with six individual contemporary jewelers (Gésine Hackenberg, Evert Nijland, Manon van Kouswijk, Katja Prins, Andrea Wagner, and Lucy Sarneel) for overlapping lengths of time during a period of eight months—in Amsterdam. Of the experience, she writes, “Amsterdam showed me the inner workings of several successful studios where I slowly gained a sense of each artist’s priorities in making. Conversations ranging from artistic influences to business ethics helped me learn something of the dedication and flexibility necessary in this field.” Janvier’s work from her time as a fellow features delicate drawings in enamel on copper suggesting fragile human interactions and isolation. Now a graduate student at Cranbrook Academy of Art, her jewelry emphasizes less traditional materials, but still is centered on the same issues of “loneliness and solitude, connection and twinning.”
Many Windgate Fellows spend their grant periods on personal development—from straightforward technical training, to cultivating an informed eye by visiting museums and craft shows, or investigating their cultural heritage—all in order to have the skills and inspiration to be better artists and stronger contributors to the field of craft. Amy Hamai (2010) learned new skills through courses at Penland School of Crafts and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Wes Valdez (2011), who considers himself “a glass artist that occasionally makes jewelry,” is using his fellowship to work with professional glass artists. Inspired by stories shared with him as a child by his mother, a registered nurse working in a cardiovascular intensive care unit, much of Valdez’s work plays on human anatomy and personal memories; his recent torque necklace Precious, made of cast glass fingers and copper, was inspired by seeing people scavenge copper from buildings in order to sell it for scrap to have money for food.
JOOHYUN LEE, 2009.
Rachael Nyhus, as part of a “three-month art history immersion in Europe” spent a week studying chasing and repoussé with Valentin Yotkov in Tuscany and a month as a resident artist at a coal forge and sculpture park in Méjannes-le-Clap in France, an experience that “deepened [her] knowledge of and ability to work with the plasticity and malleability of steel.” She adds, “But maybe more importantly, in the coal forge, I felt a connection to the past, practicing skills that have been employed by human hands for centuries.” Through much of her recent work, Nyhus seeks to recapture the texture and beauty of the metal she observed in a scrap yard near the forge by using reclaimed steel that she enamels, folds and forms, and allows to rust.
Aaron Decker is immersing himself in the contemporary jewelry scene in Portugal, reveling in the passion, drive and skill of the jewelers he is encountering. He enthusiastically explains: “For me it is an honor and privilege to soak in this kind of atmosphere and really explore myself through other scopes and lenses.” Rachel Columb is traveling to London where she will attend the London Design Festival, and will visit “various museums to see objects from old wunderkammern and natural history collections as part of a visual research project to influence a new body of work.” Craig Kelly (2008), who combines contemporary imagery and materials with traditional Navajo materials and techniques, beautifully illustrated by his Traditional Circuitry necklace that pairs an Ethernet cable with beadwork, visited museums in San Francisco and New York for inspiration and study. Kelly’s thoughtful incorporation of modern elements combined with his skillful and reverent use of traditional Native American beadwork techniques results in an intriguing hybrid of tradition and modernity.
For JooHyun Lee (2009), her initial fellowship activity led to a series of educational opportunities and connections culminating in a graduate degree. She participated in the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts workshop in 2009 with Manuel Vilhena, who teaches metal art and jewelry at the Oslo National Academy of Arts in Norway. Vilhena invited her to participate in a workshop in Oslo, and there she met Michael Rowe, a professor at the Royal College of Art, where she recently completed her master’s degree in Applied Art. She describes the Salzburg workshop setting as “a beautiful, old salt factory in Alte Saline,” where everything “was rusty and worn out and the air was slightly humid and salty.” She particularly was struck by the factory’s patina, and created works “based on the beauty of aging.” Lee remains drawn to the sensual, tactile qualities of jewelry and now is focusing on “the idea of weight in relation to touch” and how the body becomes used to the weight of jewelry and how jewelry adjusts to the temperature of the body.
One of the first Windgate Fellows, Rachelle Lim (2006), recalls her fellowship period as a time when she longed “to define [her] own identity as a contemporary Chinese-American woman” because of the tension between her parents’ traditional Chinese values and her own American viewpoints. She began her fellowship by attending a SNAG conference in Chicago, then stayed in that city to research its Chinatown. She also traveled to Chinatowns in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, where she grew up. She felt particularly at home in San Francisco’s Chinatown, where many people speak the same dialect of Chinese as her and where, for the first time, she visited her grandfather’s grave, located in the oldest Chinese-American cemetery in San Francisco. Through her research she developed not only a better understanding of her family’s heritage, but deep interests in traditional Chinese funerary and mourning practices and China’s one-child-only rule, which led to an interest in female fertility. She combined these influences in her Lost Girl Urn, which features traditional Chinese mourning symbols and colors and references female reproductive organs. She recalls, “Some of the issues I had researched were hard for me to confront, but I felt were important social issues in the metalwork and jewelry I wanted to make.” Now she works as a senior jewelry designer for a company in Los Angeles, and her fellowship experiences continue to shape her work.
Aram Choi (2008), who attended SOFA Chicago and SOFA NY during her fellowship, works as a senior designer for a large costume jewelry importer company in New York, and while she has little time for her studio practice, she considers her artistic background beneficial to her current work. She views contemporary costume jewelry as having “no boundaries” and seems to relish the constant demand for new designs; with each product she originates concepts and makes designs and oversees them through their mass production in China.
Also interested in the mass production of jewelry, Erin Rose Gardner (2007) spent four months working with Shanghai University’s jewelry program and traveled to jewelry processing centers around China, visiting “factories and wholesale centers that specialized in mass-produced sentimental jewelry (e.g., wedding rings, heart pendants).” Her research of the mass production of jewelry as well as an earlier workshop she took with designer/jeweler Ted Noten inspired her to create jewelry that exists in the intersection between craft, design and industry. Her work often addresses the value and meaning that society assigns to jewelry. In 2007 she and Meg Drinkwater founded The Opulent Project (T.O.P.), which Gardner describes as “a collaboration, a brand, a series of projects.” For their Costume Costume Ring, Gardner found several vintage costume jewelry cocktail rings from which they made rubber molds that they stacked and cast in silver to make a single ring—using copies of imitations to create a subversive interpretation of costume jewelry.
Like Gardner, many of the fellows are pursuing artistic careers that incorporate numerous media, various types of production and multiple areas of practice. For example, when Amelia Toelke (2006) was nominated to be a fellow, much of her work was enamel on metal brooches—including images of scrolling banners and Rorschach inkblots—while most of her current work is large scale sculpture and installation that employs the visual vocabulary of jewelry, including a wall-size charm bracelet silhouette. Completing the cycle of influences, she is working on a line of production jewelry, called Piecemeal, inspired by the visual themes in her installation work.
RACHELLE LIM, San Diego State University. AMELIA TOELKE, State University of New York at New Paltz.
DANIEL ICAZA, Arizona State University.
Daniel Icaza (2010), who used his fellowship to establish a studio in Costa Rica (he has dual United States/Costa Rican citizenship), acknowledges the sense of responsibility the fellowship brought with it: “Becoming a Windgate Fellow has deeply influenced my motivation and incentive to continue producing art. Not only has it provided me with the opportunity to have my own space to create art, but it has also made me realize that people appreciate the work I produce and want me to make more of it.” During his fellowship he focused on his ongoing Monetary Bondage series, in which he places banknotes and coins in elaborately embellished metal settings, both to highlight their artistry and to raise questions about the significant role money plays in social interactions.
The success of The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design’s Windgate Fellowship program is illustrated by the talent, curiosity and professional commitment of the young artists involved. Staiger sums up the influence of her fellowship experience by remarking, “All of my current work I can honestly say would have not been possible or the same without the Windgate Fellowship.” Perhaps the best illustration of the program’s influence is the college freshman who found a postcard announcing the Windgate Fellowship in his student advisor’s office when he registered for his first classes: “I stuck that card on my fridge when I got home and told myself I would be on one of those cards when I graduated.” That motivation guided Wes Valdez throughout a college career marked by craft excellence and culminated in a Windgate Fellowship.
SUGGESTED READING
“Windgate Charitable Foundation: Wow.” Fiberarts Vol. 33, No. 3 (Nov.-Dec.2006): 14.
Ashley Callahan is an independent scholar and curator in Athens, Georgia, with a specialty in modern and contemporary American decorative arts. Of preparing the Windgate Fellowship article she states, “Focusing on the Windgate Fellows working in jewelry provided an exciting window into current jewelry practices. While each artist’s story and work is interesting on its own, the overall picture they create collectively is especially compelling. The contemporary jewelry landscape in the United States as represented by this group is diverse and international and even though the Fellowship program focuses on U.S. schools it allows for extensive world travel and cross-cultural influences.” She adds, “the Fellows I contacted (all but three were available) were remarkably gracious, open and enthusiastic.”
