Jewelry Study with Arts to Life - Kara Ross Breaks New Ground Oct 20-22

May 3, 2010 - PRLog -- Arts to Life takes sixteen participants into the heart of the New York Jewelry District to elite traders, couture jewelers, and Mastoloni pearls for hands-on in-depth expert study of rare gems, colored diamonds, estate jewelry, and master designer jewelry today. The three day program entitled “Man’s Enduring Passion for Gems” explores why jewels and jewelry from ancient times to the present have obsessed the powerful and the wealthy.  Likewise that it is passion for gems and for jewelry as an art form that has inspired master jewelry makers from the Renaissance to the present.

Experts through their collections of rare gemstones, colored diamonds and pearls create easy memory charts for recognition of depth and clarity in familiar stones, components of unusual stones, and the most desirable cultured pearls.

Lee Siegelson’s collection of estate jewelry is better than a museum as his passion has resulted in access to master designers of every period stretching over two hundred years with works by Castellani, Lalique, Suzanne Belperron and Paul Flato.

These past masters as well as select couture designers of today demonstrate the qualities necessary for collectible jewelry. These include refinement, technical expertise, quality bench work, deft combination of precious materials, skill in the setting of gems, and ingenuity of design.  Examination of master artisans poses the question, within each time period, of the elements that lift work from excellent to extraordinary. .  

Arts to Life, has led in-depth jewelry studies for twenty years in America, London, Paris, Antwerp and Milan.  It enables study of Kara Ross within an historical and international contemporary jewelry framework, setting her along side other international designers of the moment. A lecture explores the impact of culture on art form, the growth of a particular American aesthetic in the 20th Century along with a unique definition of American Beauty.   The program will assert that despite and because of this jewelry’s semi-mass production; its use of unorthodox material; its return to the handmade over bench work; its minimal reliance on precious gemstones or diamonds and its close association with accessory jewelry; Kara Ross breaks new ground.

A visit to her studio and study of her couture and regular collection will demonstrate how the delicate Rococo of the late 20th century is discarded for the big, bold, and exotic.  Large geometric shapes and signature pieces make colorful daring statements. Arm adornments are oversized, rings blossom like flowers inset with unexpected stones such as tiger’s eye and earrings dangle in geometric shapes.  Jewelry is now an ingenious mix of precious and non precious materials. Gems and sometimes diamonds either deftly embedded or set in a framework of gold, combine with materials fresh to jewelry in 2010.  This includes smooth, sometimes subtly zebra striped wood, python and lizard skin, stingray, rough crystals, brass and metal.

None of these materials are new to art form.  Eileen Gray used shark skin on her furniture in the 1930s.  Nor is Kara Ross’ assertion of the handmade novel to designer jewelry.  It is the continuance of a long tradition dating back to the middle ages and revived in the late 19th Century in England.  Hers is a not dissimilar statement to those of artisans who turned to the handmade and everyday in the Art Deco period, rejecting the slim forms and profuse use of gems that we associate with that period.  Her work evokes that of Swiss born designer Jean Dunand whose jewelry was made of silver lacquered with red and black and followed geometric shapes.   Her work has its antecedents equally in the handmade jewelry of Jean Després whose industrial pieces spoke to the strong image of the liberated and androgynous woman. Both of these designers are highly collectible today.

The program will demonstrate why Kara Ross is important as a bridge between traditional jewelry and new cutting edge Contemporary Jewelry such as that of Thomas Gentile.  Ursula Neuman Curator of Jewelry at The Museum of Modern Art and Design through a private collection,will explain the importance of Contemporary Jewelry’s revolutionary approach to adornment as a statement on society and politics.

Kara Ross is making a similar statement.  Her jewelry is available to a broad segment of women.  She is discarding the notion of jewelry in service to social order or persona. Likewise she rejects the idea of  designer jewelry as something precious.  Her jewelry pieces exist for their beauty as objects and not for showcase display.  Each is its own statement not a definer of its wearer.  It overpowers anything around it, dispelling the notion that it is an accessory.  Arts to Life will show how it departs radically from previous American style makers and asserts a new aesthetic that is distinctly American.  Her work will provoke participants on the program, many of whom are collectors, to rethink tomorrows collectible.

For further information on Arts to Life’s program Oct 20 -22nd see http://www.artstolife.com/arts-to-life/jewellery-current-...

Or email jessica@artstolife.com

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Outgrowth Jessica Deutsch experience Director Programs Sotheby's. Since 1997 has offered expert study USA and UK jewelry, all arts and cultural travel. Mount exhibitions, represent artists, execution period rooms, do commissions using skilled crafsmen.