‘Signs of Life’ melds exquisite jewelry with captivating literary imagery
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An acorn, a leaf, a lavender bloom.
\nA bee, a chick, a butterfly wing.
\nA hand, a heart, a vial of tears.<\/p>\n
Things we take for granted. Yet, each offers a promise of life. Each heralds nature, birth and human relationships. Each is a metaphor for our time on Earth; a “Sign of Life” that germinates and glows within a nifty hybrid exhibit at Facere Jewelry Art Gallery.<\/p>\n
Eye-catching and contemplative, “Signs” sprouts from a marriage of opposites; nine visual artists wedded to nine articulate writers. The first group sets a table with exquisitely sculpted necklaces, bracelets, brooches and rings; the other indulges in a literary feast. It’s a call to the senses and a response of intellect that spawns captivating stories and poems.<\/p>\n
Though hardly shy and retiring, this jewelry avoids bling-bling flash. Stunning and clever, it sucks the authors into its content; engulfs them in moody milieus that conjure up passages, sorrow, the natural world, love, magic and bliss.<\/p>\n
Spring and youth reverberate in “Young Lily-Trotter,” a delicate sterling and gold locket by Linda Kindler Priest. Nestled beneath its silver, lacy lily-pad lid, a gold repoussed fledgling struggles to stand on its feet. Likening him to preadolescent innocence, poet Linda Bierds recalls that delicious, carefree time before life, like a locket, can snap shut.<\/p>\n
At an ominous opposite, Judith Hoyt hammers corroded, discolored tin into wide-eyed, ghostly faced brooches. Amuletlike in imagery and aged patinas, they might be memento mori. For sure, they get under your skin.<\/p>\n
No worries. Kristin Mitsu Shiga’s “Happy Trails” silver ring reverses the spell. Flanked by a silver lasso, tooled saddle flaps and a spinning boot spur, her plastic flashing Roy Rogers calmly plugs the bad guy. Kathleen Bisagna’s poem, referencing dusty deserts, the scent of sage and tumult of stars, triggers memories of Dale Evans singing “Happy trails to you …”<\/p>\n
Mining that ’50s era, Jessica Calderwood broods with a modern flair. While 17th-century portrait brooches commemorated loved ones, Calderwood’s enameled, pearl-edged “Mother’s Little Helper II” feels voyeuristic. A pearl-adorned woman, about to swallow a pearl-like pill, reflects that happy-trail time of unspoken sexuality and constrictive, numbing culture. In “desire,” Frances McCue speculates that, “For her, a thought burrowed down and down, making itself more private until no articulation was possible.” No one gleans pearls of wisdom from this depressed, cookie-cutter gal.<\/p>\n
Kristen Zevenbergen savors and pockets that past. Snippets of typewriter ribbons, Bakelite, measuring tape, watch faces, mah-jongg tiles, bone dice and buttons preserve a time that’s slipping away. Hand-worked jewelry as the artist’s metaphor for women’s toil encompasses nurturing femininity. “Third Time’s a Charm,” a collaged necklace reminiscent of Ramona Solberg’s earthy jewelry, inspired Colleen J. McElroy’s “what WE REMEMBER, what WE FORGET,” which portrays a woman searching “through a collection of lost memories” and three women walking with “baskets on their heads.”<\/p>\n
In this second annual “Signs of Life” visual-literary fete, curator Karen Lorene makes us thirst for more. We garner hope. We sense our dependence on a flower, a bird or a smile to, as McElroy writes in her poem, “make the day come alive.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
‘Signs of Life’ melds exquisite jewelry with captivating literary imagery Seattle Post-Intelligence An acorn, a leaf, a lavender bloom. A bee, a chick, a butterfly wing. A hand, a heart, a vial of tears. Things we take for granted. Yet, each offers a promise of life. Each heralds nature, birth and human relationships. Each is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[411],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n