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Purchase this issue
Mona
Szabados and Alex Szabados Immersed in Magic.
Sallie Bell A Perfect and Natural Fit. Sharon
Portelance Preserving Memory and Desire. Akihiko Izukura
Living and Breathing Textiles. Chinese Warring States Glazed
Beads Unusual Faience Ornaments of the Zhou Dynasty.
Exhibition Review Artwear. Fashion and Antifashion. Costume
Arts Chanel. Ancient Arts Tutankhamun and
the Golden Age of the Pharoahs. Folk Arts 2005 Santa Fe International
Folk Art Market. Botanical Jewelry Kikui Nut Jewels
of Hawaii. Ethnographic Arts Bukhara Jewelry. Native
Arts Totems to Turquoise. Marketplace Beads
Galore. Museum News Toledo Museum of Art: Glass Study
Collection.
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Mona
Szabados & Alex Szabados |
by
Chiori Santiago |
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IMMERSED
IN MAGIC
Enamelist Mona and her husband Alex, a goldsmith, collaborate to make
narrative jewelry that contains a touch of magic. Their common motifs
feature a beauty and a beast, often depicted in a landscape glowing
with whirling ruby planets, golden suns or stained glass castles.
The enamel images seem to work a spell. They
are heroines of ancient fairytales, survivors of evil encounters,
princesses of fantasy with the most divine animals as their helpmates
and royal subjects. Mona Szabados calls them “my girls.”
They are rendered so precisely, with rosy cheeks and translucent skin,
that it is hard to believe they are not flesh, but metal and glass.
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Sallie
Bell |
by
Robin Updike |
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A
PERFECT AND NATURAL FIT
Having spent nearly twenty-five years making jewelry, Bell is clearly
a designer and artisan who enjoys her work and finds satisfaction in
creating arresting jewelry. But it is also impossible to separate her
life as an artist from her life as a Buddhist. For her, the two seem
a perfect and natural fit. Both require commitment, hard work, and a
willingness to undertake challenges. Says Bell: “Jewelry has an
incredibly strong spiritual aspect. And when people have the courage
to wear it, it makes them feel good because of the spiritual aspect,
whether they are aware of it or not.”
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Sharon
Portelance |
by
Carl Little |
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Preserving
Memory and Desire
A “wiggly path” is how Sharon Portelance describes
her career as an artist and metalsmith up to this moment in time. Since
graduating from the Portland School of Art in 1982, Portelance has followed
a somewhat circuitous route in her artistic endeavors, yet a strong
aesthetic vision combined with a love of teaching has led her to a place
of critical notice and engaging relevance. “To be able to question
yourself takes time,” Portelance points out. She has learned to
make art and then step back and evaluate it without suppressing the
creative juices. She teaches her own students that they sometimes have
to let go of the class critiques and just work. “If you’re
constantly evaluating,” she explains, “you’re never
going to allow those doors to open that you’re not even sure are
going to open because you’re so constantly honest.”
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Akihiko
Izukura |
by
Leslie Clark |
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LIVING
AND BREATHING TEXTILES
Akihiko Izukura has had a life-long love affair with silk. Silk has
inspired his creativity, evolved his philosophy, stimulated his dedication
to weaving and dyeing, defined his aesthetics and buoyed twenty-five
years of study and research into the history and technology of fiber
arts. For thirty years, he has never worn anything else. When he developed
skin-allergy problems as a young man, he experimented by making himself
some undergarments from what the industry still considers trash, the
low-grade silk fibers that are usually thrown away. His allergy disappeared.
“Silk is so easy on the skin,” he observes. “It breathes.
It cuts ultraviolet light; it absorbs moisture and deodorizes perspiration.”
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Chinese
Warring States Glazed Beads |
by
Robert K. Liu |
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Unusual
Faience Ornaments of the Zhou Dynasty
The Zhou Dynasty (1027-256 B.C.) of China is unique in having
produced faience, glass and composite ornaments of glaze with a faience
core. Before and after this dynasty, neither faience nor composite beads
were ever made again in China. With few exceptions, after the middle
to late Warring States period (approximately fourth to third centuries
B.C.), elaborate and precise glass beads with stratified eyes and/or
rosettes were also no longer a part of ancient Chinese adornment. Interestingly,
this is also the same timespan for the making of composite beads. Some
glass eyebeads have been found from the Western Han period but these
are very different from those of the middle-late Warring States.
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