PETER ANTOR
Peter Antor’s “architectonic rings” evoke Frank Loyd Wright houses with their cantilevered designs and hidden interior spaces that are as exquisitely detailed as their exteriors. Silver openwork walls allow the wearer “to immerse themselves completely within” the rings that can be seen as miniature sculptures. The artist states “by combining the spatial and structural qualities of architecture with the intimacy created between jewelry and its wearer, I encourage the viewer to explore, discover, and question the work.”
Peter Antor received his MFA in Metalsmithing and Jewelry from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and his BFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from Grand Valley State University in 2011. Peter works with a wide range of materials from precious metals to concrete and wood, his body of work ranges from sculptural jewelry to functional lamp work.
SUSIE GANCH
Susie Ganch is an artist who questions consumer culture and the impact humankind has on the environment. Part of her practice is Directing Radical Jewelry Makeover, an international jewelry mining, and recycling project that continues to travel across the country and abroad. Like the artist’s monumental tapestry Remember Me, Katrina fashioned from used coffee lids whose patterns suggest oceanic currents, her brooches created from engraved plastic bottle lids speak to the “many things we covet and consume (but) are eventually abandoned.” With them, the artist suggests that “ trash is dirty and discarded but can become seductively beautiful."
Susie Ganch is Interim Chair for the Department of Craft and Material Studies in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received her MFA from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Recent solo exhibitions include: How Soon is Now?, MS State University, TIED, an ArtForum Critics’ pick, Visual Arts Center, Richmond, VA, Land and Sea. Her work has been in museum exhibitions including: MFA Boston, the Design Museum, London, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan, Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC, the Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI, Milwaukee Art Museum, WI and the UICA, Grand Rapids, MI. Upcoming exhibitions include Smithsonian Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., and the Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA. Public collections include Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, Asheville Art Museum, NC, and Quirk Hotel, Richmond, VA.
Image: Susie Ganch, Untitled (brooch), 2018, engraved bottle lids and beads, 0.75 x 2 x 2 inches, $120
KIT PAULSON
Kit Paulson’s works are also informed by architecture. Her glass headpiece “Opaline Corona” is based on Russian stained glass windows. She suggests that ornament is more than a decorative enhancement but “calls upon the viewer to actively look and see” and in so doing have a more meaningful interaction with the physical world. Paulson’s compelling lace-like designs in borosilicate glass evoke the Gothic period in the art with its cathedrals covered in “forests of elaborate decoration.”
Kit Paulson received her BFA with a concentration in glass from Alfred University in 2004 and has been working in glass continuously since then. She has taught at Penland School of Craft as well as numerous other private glass studios. In 2015 Kit completed the Rosenberg Residency at Salem State University and a residency at the Tacoma Museum of Glass. She has received scholarships from Pilchuck Glass School, Corning Museum of Glass, Pittsburgh Glass Center, The Windgate Foundation, Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass and the Glass Art Society. Her work has been published in New Glass Review editions 36, 37 and 38. Kit recently began a three-year residency at Penland School of Craft.
SARAH WEST
Sarah West also approaches her work as wearable sculpture. Her “Trapezoid Cluster Necklace” uses steel and vinyl LPs set like stones to address the fragility and strength of the human psyche. She states: “My works are maps of the places we have been in our lives, in our dreams as well as where we are going in the future. Like the power lines that intersect the horizon, my jewelry and sculptures are architectural landscapes that interact with body and space.”
Sarah West lives in Raleigh, NC. Sarah earned a BFA in Metal Design from East Carolina University and a Bench Jewelry Certificate from North Bennet Street School. Sarah was a recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship and her distinctive linear works have been selected for exhibitions nationwide including: Monochrome Noir at Velvet Da Vinci; Bijoux! at The Norton Museum among others. Sarah’s jewelry has been published in the books New Earrings and Behind the Brooch. Sarah’s steel and textile installations are in the permanent collections of Hotel Indigo in El Paso; The Renaissance Hotel in Chicago; AC Hotels in San Francisco; Vail Cascade Hotel and AC Hotel in Times Square.