OLD FRIENDS and SCAD GRADS:
EXCITING NEW JEWELRY FROM AN EXTRAORDINARY PLACE.
Los Angeles – For over 27 years, Freehand Gallery on West Third Street has taken the lead in offering unique artist jewelry and personal adornment to Southern California. This year’s annual jewelry exhibition and sale calls attention to new artists from a very special creative source.
Old Friends and SCAD Grads will open May 3rd, showcasing the exciting designs of five talented new women and men, all recent grads of SCAD: The Savannah College of Art and Design.
Curated by Rachel Gehlhar, herself a SCAD grad (’04) who specializes in shimmering enamel work resplendent with animal imagery (left), Old Friends and SCAD Grads will introduce Los Angeles to a new slice of the best in new jewelry design.
Featured artists, in addition to Gehlhar, include
Adam Smith (SCAD ’05), whose jewelry and wall sculptures seek to capture and honor all things human...joy, pain, faith, death, history, humor. He just wants us to slow down and remember where we came from – an important goal for Angelinos!
Allyson Ross (SCAD ’04) investigates feminism (right), which, ironically, works well within the jewelry medium due to the traditional connotations society places on personal adornment. Everything – from material to the placement of the jewelry – can give insight to body image and provide tension between the physical and intangible.
Halligan Norris (‘04) is inspired by old things, mini-things and mushrooms (not the Hippie kind), as well as her talented friends who do what they love, and work hard to make a living at it. Her jewelry is nostalgic, narrative, intimate and playful; it brings out the child in all of us.
Meredith Sutton (‘03), in turn, uses literature, poetry and found objects as the foundation for her pieces (left), with silver the canvas that reveals the narrative stories they inspire.
Complementing the work of these new American jewelers are outstanding examples created by some of Freehand’s best:
Michael Bayes, Catherine Butler, Thomas Rhodes and Wendy Walker. Their pearls, and the glitter of diamonds, gold and platinum, are a sophisticated counterpoint to the SCAD Grad aesthetic. New Orleans artist and activist Thomas Mann, a heroic figure in American jewelry, rounds out this fascinating group of makers with his Techno Romantic jewelry designs.
Old Friends and SCAD Grads opens at Freehand, 8413 West Third Street (west of Orlando) in Los Angeles on Saturday, May 3 at 5pm, and continues through May. Pieces may also be viewed online
HERE >>
