SARAH WAUZYNSKI “Locket Botanica” necklace (pictured with “Viewing Loupe” bracelet), an illuminated folio of Washington Native Plants of sterling silver, egg tempera and mixed media, 2012. Photograph by the artist.

Women Working Words

exhibition

Karen Lorene, owner of Facèré Jewelry Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington, has two great passions: jewelry and writing. As the founder of Facèré, she has for four decades sought out jewelry artists from around the country and the globe, organized exhibitions and championed jewelry art with unbridled enthusiasm. Along the way this one-time schoolteacher and painting major also decided to take up writing. About twenty-five years ago she started writing fiction and nonfiction.

Lorene’s first plan to meld jewelry and writing into one project was the 2004 debut of “Signs of Life,” an annual jewelry show and arts publication in which she commissions writers to respond to individual pieces of specially created jewelry with poems, essays or short stories. Now, in “Women Working Words,” Lorene once again found a way to celebrate jewelry and words in one exhibition. To mark the publication of her first novel she asked thirteen women jewelry artists to make work that involves words. The result was an exuberant recent showing in February of bracelets, brooches, necklaces, rings, and earrings that include subtle word play, not-so-subtle puns, aphorisms, quotes from famous writers, script in secret languages, and jewelry literally made of the pages of books. If you love words and were lucky enough to attend, finding the wearable words became as pleasurable as admiring the craftsmanship of the work.

by Robin Updike
issue 36.3

This article in its entirety appears only in the print magazine.

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