Minneapolis, October 9, 2015—Kick off the holiday season and meet jewelry artists while picking out lovely and unique pieces for yourself or as a gift. At the Walker Shop’s Jewelry Artist Mart, more than 25 jewelry artists will showcase their original, hand-crafted designs featuring a rich variety of materials. Sample treats from local chocolatier B.T. McElrath from 12 noon to 2 pm.
Bring a friend and enjoy this not-to-be-missed Walker Shop event, just in time for the holidays! Walker members also receive a 10% discount on all purchases.
Artists include: Sarah Burnett, Yen Chee, Bridget Clark, Félixe Carole Dicaire, Leni Erickson, Grace Hogan, Madison Holler, Natalie Jacob, Karin Jacobson, Annika Kaplan, Britta Kauppila, Tia Keobounpheng, Lara Knutson, Penny Larsen, Lindsay Locatelli, Nick Lundeen, Marisa Martinez, Sheila Moar, Elizabeth Novak, Erin Smith, Studio Sophia Sophia, Barbara Stellmach, Emily Temte, Mel Tudisco, Helen Wang, and Rebecca Wicklund.
All proceeds support the Walker’s artistic and educational programs.
The Walker Art Center Artist Jewelry Mart Takes Place on Saturday, November 7, 11 am – 5 pm in the Skyline Room.
Walker members receive a 10% discount on all purchases. All proceeds support the Walker’s artistic and educational programs.
Walker Art Center’s Jewelry Artist Mart
Saturday, November 7, 11 am – 5 pm
Skyline Room
Member Mimosa Preview: Jewelry Artist Mart
Saturday, November, 10 – 11 am
Skyline Room
Free
Members see it first! Enjoy refreshments and the first pick of fabulous pieces at the Jewelry Artist Mart. Join more than 25 regional jewelry artists in the Walker’s beautiful Skyline Room as they show their original pieces in a rich variety of materials and styles. Bring a friend and enjoy this signature Walker Shop event, just in time for Mother’s Day! Walker members also receive a 10% discount on all purchases.
Register online, by e-mail to membership@walkerart.org, or by calling 612.375.7655.
All proceeds support the Walker’s artistic and educational programs.
Featured Artists
Sarah Burnett, Richfield, MN
Materials: concrete (cement + water + aggregates), sterling silver, gold-filled findings
Burnett is the founder of ‘cere which was created out of fascination and intrigue of the challenge. The idea was simple: transcend the sophisticated and elegant qualities of concrete, perfected by architects such as Tadao Ando, at a smaller, wearable scale. In its ubiquitous form, concrete is an overlooked and industrial material, unrecognized as an innately expressive medium. ‘cere alters that preconception by creating pieces that are light, delicate and refined, yet are still raw and true to their substance. Each piece is individually cast by hand, a technique that, when combined with the variable nature of concrete, ensures that no two pieces are the same. Every item is an original and unique as the person who wears it.
Félixe Carole Dicaire, Montreal, Quebec
Materials: steel wire and feathers
Formally trained in fashion design in Montreal, Dicaire discovered a passion for jewelry and accessories in 1999. Both her clientele and the fashion community immediately began to qualify her bold, sculptural pieces as “wearable art.” Her creations are inspired by the organic forms of the plant and insect world.
Dicaire sculpts with steel wires and feathers directly on the mannequin where she transforms them not only into unique jewelry pieces, but also sculptural body art. Taking each and every line into account, she highlights the perfect harmony between living and inanimate matter to create jewelry that is at once refined, ethereal, and alive with an unexpected touch of sensuality.
Yen Chee, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: sterling silver, quartz crystal, onyx and tourmalinated quartz
Yen-Ying Chee has always been drawn to creating clean, unique, modern jewelry. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Boston University, as well as a bachelor of science in interior design from the University of Minnesota. Prior to working as a full-time jewelry designer and mom, she worked as a commercial interior designer at architecture firms for over a decade. These experiences greatly influenced the “miniature sculptures” she creates. Besides being inspired by her travels, furniture, and architecture, her designs often come from a deeper spiritual place within. She is especially drawn to working with clear quartz crystals due to their natural beauty and healing properties. Clear quartz known as “universal crystals” are completely natural and from the earth, believed for centuries to attract positive energy that enhances the mind, body, and spirit.
Bridget Clark, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: sterling silver, gold, pearls, and gemstones
Clark is inspired by the simple reduction of primitive, industrial and organic. Smooth brushed sterling silver finishes are accented by matte grey oxidation, semiprecious gemstones, rich pigments or 24 carat gold. Movement and subtle asymmetry in her pieces keep them visually interesting. Her love of art and science is where her career in metalsmithing began, the arc of which includes a bit of coursework on the fundamentals, an apprenticeship and much self-imposed trial and error. Clark’s work is primarily spurred from an interest in shape manipulation and experimentation. She lives and works in Minneapolis creating and producing jewelry since 1986, and became a full time endeavor in 1997.
Leni Erickson, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: beads
Erickson loves the pivot places between things like sunrise and sunset, the tangible and intangible, the place where reality shifts. She questions what is going on beyond the visible that interacts with everyone? For her it is a subtle, powerful consciousness that is moving, and she loves to participate with it. The process of creating something beautiful with color, light, and materials is magical. Now after decades exploring quantum physics and ageless wisdom traditions, Erickson wanted to take her exploration of jewelry beyond what she already knew. She explored prayer beads and medicine beads. Like nature, each of these evoked participation beyond the physical. They invite us to connect to a deeper, aware presence.
What is that power? How are medicine beads different than jewelry? How are these types of beads like nature? Why are they powerful to the experiencer? What makes this happen? This is Erickson’s exploration with the beads.
When she visited the island of Pemba, in East Africa, she was told that the door is the most important part of a home. It is a sacred portal connecting outer and inner worlds. She wants these beads to be just that: a sacred portal to something deep within or around you. May you touch and be touched by these pieces, and make them yours.
Madison Holler, St Cloud, MN
Materials: beads and sterling silver
Born and raised in central Minnesota, Holler works mostly with metals, beads, found Minnesota porcupine quills, beach glass and other organic materials from Minnesota and near her cabin in Ontario, Canada. She also enjoys wood working and carving, baking, and sewing.
Grace Hogan, Bayfield, WI
Materials: sterling silver, hand-picked rocks, and beach glass
Inspired by the things “we stomp over in our everyday lives,” Hogan creates wearable objects that combine sheet metal with elements and ideas from nature such as hand-picked rocks and beach glass.
Natalie Jacob, Jersey City, NJ
Materials: game pieces and beads
Etymology started in 2008 back when Jacob was a first year student at the art college MICA. Making jewelry grew out of her natural disposition to create, as she was always making and creating things in an artistic way, even from a young age. Jewelry seemed to be a natural fit as she had also always been devouring fashion magazines and loved the idea of being involved in the fashion (or jewelry!) world.
When Jacob started making jewelry, she was using game pieces like scrabble and boggle cubes to spell out words and phrases in her work, thus the name Etymology. The aesthetic has changed since but the name stuck. She’s learned many different techniques and fabrication methods to create her work, and everything is handmade by her in her Brooklyn, NY studio.
Karin Jacobson, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: sterling silver, palladium, lab-grown gems
Play is a central theme in Karin Jacobson’s futuristic and fun work, which is inspired by science-fiction, comic books, mechanical toys, and Japanese animation. Making bold statements, her designs incorporate big shapes, clean lines, and bright colors.
Annika Kaplan, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: sterling silver and semi-precious gemstones
After studying jewelry design and fabrication at the Savannah College of Art and Design and the Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Kaplan set up shop in a small south Minneapolis studio. Influenced by nature and folk traditions, she produces jewelry made mostly from blackened sterling silver and semi-precious gems. She strives to create pieces which are both highly wearable and highly unique, in hopes of offering wearers a new way to adorn themselves.
Britta Kauppila, St. Paul
Materials: sterling silver, stone, gold and pearls
Kauppila hand forms each piece of jewelry she makes by manipulating and shaping metal into pieces that are extremely soft and delicate, but substantial. Often inspired by nature, she combines form, line, and texture to produce movement, rhythm, and harmony and is drawn to the contradiction of the hard immovable structure that metal offers to create her unique jewelry line.
Tia Keobounpheng, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: wood, acrylic, various metals
Keobounpheng has always been fascinated with “things” and how they are made. Making things with her hands and designing jewelry contrasts the time and scale involved in working through the architectural design process, adding considerable balance to her own creative process and drive. Color, texture, repetition, variation, light and tactile quality are important considerations in her work.
Lara Knutson, New York City, NY
Materials: microscopic glass beads
Lara Knutson is an architect, industrial designer, as well as a jeweler. Knutson’s pieces are comprised of microscopic glass beads. The “Nebula” series has a soft reflective fabric that glows when light is behind one’s head, like a cloud of stardust, it is ephemeral with flashes of luminescence. Knutson grew up on the beach and drew inspiration from much of nature; rainbows, iridophores on fish, and lightening. There is no need to cut “Nebula’s” stray threads. Give the entire strand a slight wiggle to put the threads back in place.
Penny Larsen, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: sterling silver and semi-precious stones
Creative director Penny Larsen Munson loves jewelry of all kinds. Her enjoyment and love of creating are obvious in her attention to hand-crafted detail. Her BFA in printmaking is evident in the clean, organic lines of her designs. Her love of travel and nature can be seen in her latest line simply titled “penny” which consists of silver pendant charm choices.
Lindsay Locatelli, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: Sterling silver, wood, gemstones and found objects.
Lindsay Locatelli is guided by her need to recreate personal experiences and places that she has been while exploring the great Southwest. Many of her hand crafted creations are inspired by undulating mesa tops, sloping plateaus, jagged silvery mountains, tucked away creeks, found treasures, spiritual creatures and the diamond encrusted night sky.
Since graduating from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2009, with a B.F.A. in Studio Furniture, Locatelli has pursued practices working in many different mediums. With experience focusing on conceptual ideation and functional design, she is drawn towards creating wearable objects inspired by important events in her life.
Marisa Martinez, St. Paul, MN
Materials: handmade glass beads, sterling and fine silver, semi-precious stones, ancient findings.
Marisa Martinez, a jewelry designer/ metalsmith in Minnesota since 2005, attended the College of St. Catherine and the University of St. Thomas, where she studied Fine Art, Business, and Spanish. Martinez is influenced by her Indigenous Mexican culture and her passion to hand-fabricate using precious metals and stones. She captures her story in a design style using imperfect raw organic materials that draw you into each piece. The pieces she creates often elicit a physical response to be touched and invite your curiosity to its story. Martinez shares that she is driven to fabricate work that is sparked by her culture and spirituality but it does not come to life until she shares it with her collectors.
“My work comes to life when it is touched and worn by those that collect my work. It embodies the hours and energy spent working the metal and selecting the stones specifically for the piece” explains Martinez. Her recent years have been exciting as she has been exploring more of her roots and deliberate passion of metal-smithing techniques interweaving her indigenous culture with relevant life experiences today.
Sheila Moar, St. Paul, MN
Materials: sterling silver and semi-precious stones
The designer, Sheila Moar, has had a life-long interest in exotic travel around the world, plus a keen interest in art, and women’s fashion and adornment. She has traveled extensively in Asia, where she was inspired to create her unique art statement jewelry, a fusion of East meets West. Each necklace integrates an unusual mix of elements from around the world, often using artifacts and beads she has picked up from her travels. Her pieces are designed with a particular sensitivity to color and textures using elements that mix the refined and the exotic. Her designs are versatile and can be worn casually or for more formal occasions.
As Moar designs, she is always imagining how her piece will be worn with a contemporary fashion outfit. As one wears one of her creations, inevitably you are asked: “Where did you get that?” This fosters relationships and social interaction with strangers and friends, which is a fun by-product of wearing one of her creations.
Beth Novak, St. Louis Park, MN
Materials: sterling silver, copper & Enamel
Beth Novak grew up in an extremely artistic home believing you could look at just about anything as inspiration. She is originally from Wisconsin, where she attended the UW of Stout and got a degree in Studio Art, with a concentration in art metals. Novak has since lived in St. Louis Park for the last 17 years, and after experimenting with many different mediums, she has returned to her first love, metals. Her works include enamel on copper and sterling silver. She loves to explore texture and color and finds that both silver and copper allow her to do so. Novak often manipulates the copper before enameling it, to accentuate the layers and texture under the enamel. The patina she finishes her pieces off with is quite durable and has a wonderful depth of color.
Inna Royzenfeld, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: sterling silver and stones
Royzenfeld received her BFA from the University of Minnesota in 2011, with a concentration in sculpture. In transitioning from the foundry at school to a studio located in Northeast Minneapolis, her work became scaled down; however, the organic lines and raw textures of her artistic style remained. Inna has now set out to create a body of work that incorporates the visual weightiness of her previous large sculptural pieces, but combines them with the delicacy of adornment. Mainly utilizing sterling silver and small set stones, most pieces Inna creates are one-of-a-kind, and resonate a tender, but raw feel.
Erin Smith, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: sterling silver, porcelain, terra cotta and natural fibers
Smith comes from a long line of jewelers and metalworkers (hence the name smith), but her degree in product design introduced her to a multitude of materials. She has spent the past five years designing for a nationwide retailer, while juggling her own interior and product design jobs on the side. Just recently she’s decided to delve into the world of freelance 100% allowing her to spend all of her time doing the things that she loves.
Studio Sophia Sophia, Binghamton, NY
Materials: metal and paint
Sophia Sophia is the sole designer, maker and creator of Studio Sophia Sophia, a jewelry brand that caters to the lovers of colorful and bold adornment.
Drawing inspiration from her impressive collection of patterned garments, a freshly cut citrus fruit, nail polish, textiles, The Memphis Group and most importantly, color (just to name a few), she hand fabricates and casts metal into simple shapes that are thoughtfully placed and dangled off each other, then filled with resin. She thinks of her work as wearable small paintings meant for making statements and starting conversations…not for the faint of heart!
Sophia holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, both in Jewelry and Metalsmithing. She is currently living and working in Upstate, NY.
Barbara Stellmach, Two Harbors, MN
Materials: metal, resin, spray paint, precious and semi-precious stones
Barbara Stellmach was born and raised in Two Harbors, MN. She is a self-taught metalsmith who works primarily with sterling silver and incorporates precious and semi-precious stones, Lake Superior stones, laminate, resin, spray paint, Keum-boo, filament, and fiber into her designs. Stellmach draws inspiration from the materials she works with, mid-century design, and the great Northwood’s which surround her. Clean lines, texture, color, and movement also play a role in much of her work.
Stellmach designed and fabricated three awards for the HECK of the North bike race in 2014 and she also donates her jewelry to various fundraising events.
Stellmach currently resides in Two Harbors with her husband and their two little girls. There, in her childhood home, she owns and operates a small gift shop (Seventh & Stone) showcasing her work.
Emily Temte, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: antique beads and nature materials
Each piece of jewelry Emily Temte creates is formulated to magnify the inner magic of the wearer. Discovering the essence of each, she carefully selects and combines each stone, bead, and bone. Balance and inspiration are sought through the combination of a variety of materials, textures, and colors. Antique beads and natural materials are incorporated into her designs in order to draw upon the magic and wisdom they offer. It is the artist’s hope that these pieces bring beauty and intention into the wearer’s life and that they serve as talismans for truth, love, healing, protection, and gratitude.
Mel Tudisco – Melt, Burnsville, MN
Materials: sterling silver
Mel Tudisco’s world is made up of textures and layers. She gets energized by the reaction and the texture that is created on metal when it is distorted with heat, pounding, or painting. Metal doesn’t move easily and Mel loves the process of coaxing it to give it a tactile life. She is impelled to produce structure and density where there once was smoothness. Of all her tools, her favorites are an old railroad rail and a chewed up copper mallet. When Tudisco uses these tools they create her own personal marks and textures that are unique only to her work.
Tudisco considers herself a contemporary constructivist. Her thinking is based on metals and their layers and the colors that can be built up and scratched or sanded away to reveal another texture. Softened like a lingering abstract memory. She fabricates her enthusiasm for natural vistas with her sculptural paintings and jewelry. She’s never sure what her artwork will reveal, but she knows she has no choice but to look beyond the surface.
Helen Wang, Edina, MN
Materials: semi-precious stones and mixed precious metals
Wang creates each deftly designed one-of-a kind or limited edition piece with the person who will eventually wear it in mind. Whether it’s a druzy quartz marquis earring or the vintage luxury feel of a genuine Swarovski crystal bridal choker, Wang’s hands create the jewelry to reflect her vision
Rebecca Wicklund, Minneapolis, MN
Materials: sterling silver, copper, glass and semi-precious stones
Wicklund has been creating jewelry since 2008 as a creative balance to her day job in the health care field. Her pieces are contemporary and express easy wearability. Color, clean lines and simplicity drive her creative process.
WALKER SHOP HOURS
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Closed Monday
612.375.7633
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