From the Editors 34.2

ROBERT K. LIU and CAROLYN L. E. BENESH

Dear Ornament Reader,

Next year is going to be a better year, right? So let’s boldly step into 2011, with that irrepressible, unrealistic, contrary optimism that Americans forever foresee through a romantic lens—a limitless horizon for achieving whatever we set our hearts and minds to do. This issue of Ornament takes that first step with one of our most beautiful, stimulating issues in over thirty-six years of publishing. Many readers tell us that Ornament is better than ever, and what a valuable constant we are in a topsy turvy, what’s coming down will surely go back up, confusing kind of world that is the hallmark of this twenty-first century.

Los Angeles-based clothing designer Christina Kim describes her ecologically and ethically conscious values. Recycling is not a passing fancy but a way of life rooted in her Korean childhood. “I am from a generation where I learned to do things differently,” she says. “I find that’s a comfortable place for me. It’s a continuation of what I know; it’s who I am.”

Jeweler Jesse Monongye at a recent event celebrating his exhibition opening at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, talked about his grandmother’s teachings. It is a tribute about being open to opportunity, and this great creative artist has always embraced the possible. “She always told me not to point at the stars like this,” pointing as we always do, “but instead to do this,” opening his hand and extending it with palm pointing up. “That way you can catch the stars as they pass.”

Master weaver Randall Darwall and his life and business partner Brian Murphy are renowned for their luxurious wearables and increasingly for their quilts. “The quilts,” says author Elizabeth Frankl, “are a perfect metaphor for Darwall and Murphy’s enduring personal and professional relationship; their collaboration is so rich and textured that it could easily be likened to a tapestry or quilt.” Murphy says, “There are so many small, positive pieces to our relationship, like pieces of cloth that we put together and all of a sudden the garment of our life comes together.”

Judith Kinghorn, Ornament’s cover feature, written by art historian Glen Brown, skillfully describes the essence of Kinghorn’s work. “Kinghorn may absorb information from the experience of nature, often in the context of her daily walks, but she never resorts to sketching as a means of recording those experiences, nor even as a means of organizing those experiences into plans for constructing objects. General impressions of flowers—visual experiences rendered more concise in the medium of memory—are all that she needs to fuel her work at the jewelers bench.”

Kit Carson is portrayed for his passionate love of creating, his ability to engage across a wide spectrum of interests and a warm versatility of spirit. “Once you lose your ego, you come from a place of greater integrity, because you’re coming from your soul place,” he says. “Not from a place where your ego says, ‘I’m different than, I’m better than, I’m less than, I’m separate than,’ but your soul says, ‘I’m equal with everything, and I’m capable of doing anything.’ A life lived with integrity follows naturally towards opportunity.”

Glass beadmaker and jeweler Caitlin Hyde is fond of a statement by the late scholar of mythologies, Joseph Campbell: “If the path before you is clear, it’s probably somebody else’s.” She herself has a delightful manifesto: “I believe in belief, the mystery of the human mind, perception, conception, misconception, preconception, revision.”

As we boldly step into another adventuresome new year, this is a perfect time to Ornament friends, Ornament family and to Ornament yourself.

Thank you for sharing our world,

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