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Cover Feature: Mary Kanda

Karen Lorene’s Signs of Life. Jane Herzenberg A Dazzling Pageant. Cynthia Eid Delighting in the Unexpected. Si Hoang Ao Dai Artistry. Mary Kanda Capturing Nature in Mosaics. Sole Stories Trekking from Past to Present. Bead Arts Mary V. Smith. Artist Statement Rebekah Hodous. Exhibition Women’s Tales. Exhibition What Lies Beneath. Jewelry Arts Geoffrey Giles. Artist Statement Patrick Murphy. Design Experiment Glass Pendant Hangers. Marketplace Joseph P. Stachura.

Capturing Nature in Mosaics
Commercials these days want to sell us serenity. Buy this car, and drive all alone through a rolling countryside. Use that credit card, and meditate in a stone temple far away. Rather than promise us escape from a harried world, Mary Kanda’s jewelry instead draws us into a state of cool, calibrated awareness. Like small beacons of clarity, Kanda’s beaded mosaics attract the eye with the artful simplicity of a Japanese aesthetic, layered with a strong visual direction that delivers a hip, contemporary zing. The graphic punch of rich, euphonious colors and spare linear forms echoes the mid-century Modernist movement inspired by Scandinavian design and the Bauhaus school. The nuances resonant in her work stem from a thirty-year career synthesizing a love of nature and abstract art with different mediums—ceramics, glass, enamel, metalsmithing—to create gorgeous, meticulously crafted jewelry. Photographs by Pat Pollard.

With its awkward long legs and small downy body, the golden baby bird looks like a fossil preserved forever in bas-relief. Perhaps it is the fossil of a tiny chick just minutes from hatching out of its egg, an image suggested by the fact that the little golden bird is inside an oval locket, the locket itself carefully hinged open to give a glimpse of the delicate mystery inside. A color photograph of the golden hatchling takes up the entire page; and the description notes that the pendant/locket is called Young Lily-Trotter. It is made of sterling silver, with a ruby cabochon set in fourteen karat gold, gray pearls, red silk thread, small brown diamonds set in eighteen karat gold, and repousséd fourteen karat gold. It was created by Linda Kindler Priest, a Massachusetts artist.

On the page opposite is a poem called Young Lily Trotter. Written by Linda Bierds, a poet who lives in Washington State, the poem is about a young girl poised, alert and expectant, in that moment between childhood and the first twinges of adolescence. The poem describes the girl as “downy still, preadolescent, her knees a double-joined symmetry;” and in the poem the young girl seems to decide to linger a bit longer in her childhood world, as if reluctant to leave its magical charms quite so soon. The pendant and the poem clearly are coupled, but in what way exactly? Photographs by Gordon Bernstein and Jerry Anthony.

A Dazzling Pageant
Handpainted kimonos shimmered; Lotus jackets and Swing coats caught the eye; and scarves with fanciful embellishments created a wall of multi-hued patterns. On the broad floor of the Seaport World Trade Center at CraftBoston this past April, Jane Herzenberg’s booth stood out with its lively display of colorful garments. For this consummate fiber artist-designer, memories of the bazaars in Tibet visited on a trip across Asia in the 1970s might have been the inspiration for this dazzling pageant.

While her husband James Sagalyn handled a sale, Herzenberg showed a visitor her current work, sprinkling her tour with various fabric terms: shibori, dévoré, hippari. A colorist first and foremost, she also shared her line of colors for 2007, flipping through an array of swatches dyed in shades that included rhubarb, cornflower, kiwi, rosehip, paprika, and granite. Photographs by Robert Tobey.

Ao Dai Artistry
Though not quite as ubiquitous as the Japanese kimono, the ao dai, Vietnam’s iconic symbol of feminine beauty, continues to spread beyond her borders. The graceful ao dai is typically characterized by a tight hugging bodice, extending into two long flaps in front and back, worn over wide-leg trousers. Literally translated, ao dai means “long shirt.” But such a technical description could never do justice to the elegant ao dai of prominent Vietnamese designer Si Hoang. A self-proclaimed ao dai devotee, Si Hoang lives and breathes its symbolic form—daily. For him, the ao dai is not only a national symbol, but an icon of feminine perfection. Photographs courtesy of Si Hoang.

Trekking from Past to Present
Seldom does one realize the depth of effort put into assembling an exhibition. Once you walk through the doorway, all you see are objects lining the walls, which may or may not appeal to your aesthetic values. The designs, ornamentation and construction of the art may inspire feelings of awe or wonderment, but rarely are we aware that these pieces residing in plexiglas containers were connected to people, and were once part of an individual’s life. All of them have stories that are often untold. Thus for an object which is tied to a person’s life, more so than jewelry or even clothing, there could be no more fitting title for an exhibition than Sole Stories: American Indian Footwear, currently showing at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, from October 21, 2006 to October 7, 2007. Photographs by Clark James Mishler and Craig Smith.