Surface Treatment: Slice of Art

SURFACE TREATMENT

What: "Slices: Digitally designed and printed body adornment"
Where: Clark Gallery, UTPA
When: through May 9, 2008
Contact: UTPA Art Department 381-3480

Slices

"Slices," an exhibition of digitally produced body ornaments (otherwise known as jewelry) is a museum worthy event. This fascinating view into the techno phase of jewelry-making is currently being shown at UTPA's Clark Gallery. Donna Mason Sweigart, UTPA Metals Program Director, curated this exceptional exhibit.

"Slices" blends art and technology, resulting in computer generated body adornment. It is a collection of works by "metalsmiths" working in a digital manner with alternative materials. All the work in the show was designed three-dimensionally on the computer and produced via 3-D printers. The printers use an ink jet process, resulting in layer building or "slices."

"Types of 3-D printing in the exhibit include stereo-lithography, deposition modeling, ABS plastics, gypsum prints which are done by a ZCorp machine, and also some sterling rings that were cast from wax models," said Sweigart. "I'm really happy about the way the exhibit turned out."

Eleven digital jewelry artists are represented in this show. The pieces are larger and more colorful than we usually expect of jewelry, except for the pieces cast in silver. Most of the jewelry is made of synthetic media relative to its particular rapid prototype process, such as acrylic, plastic, metal, resin, and gypsum hardened with cyanoacrylate. Some are made from starch infiltrated with elastomeric urethane to make them rubbery and movable.

All of these artists have backgrounds in traditional metalworking; computer produced jewelry represents a completely new discipline in the art/craft field. Led by Stanley Lechtzin at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, these young artists had to learn the boundaries as well as the possibilities of this new field of study.

The shapes seem unique, quite different from conventional jewelry shapes. "This is a funny thing," commented Sweigart." The software lends itself to geometric shapes, and the challenge is for the artist to make something not so geometric. So I see the shapes coming out of this struggle as a fusion of the geometric, and our want for an organic, shape."

Rebecca Strzelec finds this middle ground in three powerful brooches. For instance, Autopsy: the Shorthand Series, is bold in both shape and concept. Strzelec says she is striving to create a group of objects that supply the beginnings of a narrative. Directly inspired by the defunct stenographic language of Gregg shorthand, the brooches are three-dimensional versions of two-dimensional shorthand outlines. She says she chose words that could evoke the positive and negative emotions of relationships. The viewer/wearer may recall an event when that word was relevant and important. 

Attaching pin backs and fasteners to digital jewelry is challenging. Magnets are commonly used. Strzelec uses different types of medical adhesive. The adhesive disappears once it's on, so the pieces look like they float on the body.

Kimberly Voigt used multiples of a snowflake form for her neckpiece, Snowflake Maia: One with the Whole. "My intent is to examine and understand the connections in art, craft, design, spirituality, technology and culture," she said in her statement. "The values and intersections between these areas are what interest me and drive my research."

"I'm intrigued by our universal need to find out who we are through the intimacy of personal adornment, and the distinctive ways we present and reinvent ourselves," said Voight.

Jewelry is worn for several different reasons including status, fashion, religion, and health. Our society is accustomed to jewelry as status and fashion, so we view these pieces as to how we might wear them. Just as studio jewelry in the 1950s identified the wearer's status as a member of the artistic elite, so may this type of computerized jewelry identify a new technologically savvy generation: the elite jewelry of the techno age.

Sweigart was asked if she thought the shapes inherent in this technology would expand out into the mainstream jewelry field.

"I think it already has," she replied. "There's a look; it will change the shape of jewelry."

Nancy Moyer, PhD, is an art reviewer for The Monitor. She is an independent artist living in McAllen and may be reached at nmoyer@rgv.rr.com