http://www.gerritrietveldacademie.nl/files/scriptie2011/sieraden/Sieraad_Elenskava.pdf <———- !!!!!

The link above happens to be the biggest golden nugget of a find to date. Ok I didn’t find it, it was sent to me by a new colleague and hopefully a future partner in crime. The link will take you to  the thesis of Marina Elenskaya (founder of Current Obsession), who graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam last year. She and I have been in contact for a few weeks now, scheming away in hopes for bigger and better dialog and action within our field. If you haven’t yet checked out C-O, please do! There you will find interviews with Manfred Bischoff, work of rising super-start Adam Grinovich and other talented artists, as well as the full interview with Volker Atrops that I previously posted a bit of.

Marina too is a maker, yet her research on the state of the contemporary jewelry world is unlike most of what is out there… there really ain’t a whole lot. She talks about this in the thesis, and like me, she is very much invested in a clearer definition of the field while also questioning that very notion; part of jewelry’s incapability to be defined ultimately is one of it’s most unique qualifiers.

To get you excited, I have pulled out some tidbits! Here is the beginning of her first chapter, IDENTITY:

“Hello, what do you do?”

Status-anxiety is an ongoing issue within the field of applied arts. These tendencies of identity crisis are undoubtedly influencing the discourses in the field of Contemporary Jewellery as well. There is a certain strive for acknowledgment by the art world. But the precise hierarchy of the art world predicts us an unfortunate role of the inferior discipline. The position of an in-betweener is also not comfortable for many. People are trying to define themselves as artists, but it almost feels immodest to say it out loud. Definition has a lot to do with function and destination of the work. It has also to do with function and destination of the work. It has also to do with production, presentation, distribution and, most importantly– pricing. Jewellery wants to be priced as art, and not as craft. It means that the final product is judged upon its conceptual value and innovative thinking, rather than its material value and its quality. 

above is a mind map of Marina’s conceptions in the thesis (YOU KNOW HOW I LOVE A GOOD DIAGRAM).