16 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
‘Beyond Bling’: Exhibit of jewelry made from unusual stuff
By SOLVEJ SCHOU
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A
brooch in the shape of a
dung beetle, made out of
a gray metal teaspoon. A
bracelet resembling a koi
fish, with scales of glis-
tening red, white and blue
thumb tacks. An enormous
yellow, black and white
statement necklace made
entirely out of tiny Lego
pieces.
These and other 20th
and 21st century works in
the exhibit “Beyond Bling:
Jewelry from the Lois
Boardman Collection” at
the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, are not
only created from unusual
materials, using creative
techniques; they’re each
whimsically unique.
The exhibit features 50
pieces by jewelry design-
ers from the United States,
Europe, Australia and New
Zealand from the 300-piece
collection recently donated
to the museum by Board-
man, a Southern California
collector.
“The unifying element
of all the pieces is that they
all seem to express an idea,
and not just adorn a body,”
said Bobbye Tigerman, the
exhibit’s co-curator. “These
jewelers are making things
that are reflecting political
ideas and personal experi-
ences, and not just reflect-
ing wealth and status.” The
exhibit runs until Feb. 5.
The rings, bracelets,
necklaces and brooches on
display combine precious
materials such as gold and
silver with non-precious
materials such as feathers,
leather, glass and plastic.
A 1969 red-white-and-
blue Plexiglas breastplate
by the late East Coast
jeweler Carolyn Kriegman
has saucy, bright-red stars
covering the chest. Swiss
jeweler David Bielander’s
2007 “Dung Beetle” brooch
— which Bielander creat-
ed by bending and slicing
SOLVEJ SCHOU VIA AP
SOLVEJ SCHOU VIA AP
The “Beyond Bling: Jewelry from the Lois Boardman Collection”
exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Ange-
les features 50 jewelry pieces made from unconventional ma-
terials that belong to Southern California collector Boardman’s
300-piece jewelry collection, recently donated to the museum.
The exhibit opened on Oct. 2, and runs until Feb. 5, 2017.
This photo taken on Dec. 2, 2016 at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art in Los Angeles shows late East Coast jewelry
artist Carolyn Kriegman’s 1969 red-white-and-blue Plexiglas
breastplate .
a spoon — and his 2013
thumb tack-decorated “Koi”
bracelet imaginatively use
everyday materials.
Dutch artist and jeweler
Paul Derrez’s 1985 “Peb-
ble Collar” is made out of
potato-size ovals of cork,
lightly spray-painted pink
and strung with a red cotton
cord.
For his striking 2010
“Smoky Quartz on Coun-
tersink Nail” ring, Swiss
jewelry designer Bernhard
Schobinger shoved a nail
he forged out of white gold
through a large quartz stone
faceted like a diamond, but
intentionally chipped and
imperfect, said Tigerman.
“The idea of avant-garde
jewelry is not new. As far
back as the 19th century,
people were experiment-
ing with unconventional
materials,” she said. “In the
1960s, (artists in) the U.S.,
Germany and other coun-
tries took it to a new level.
The exhibit documents that
shift, beginning in the ‘60s
and continuing to today.”
San Francisco jewel-
ry artist Emiko Oye, 42,
patterned her bold 2008
“Maharajah’s 6th” Lego
necklace after French
jeweler Louis Boucheron’s
diamond-and-emerald neck-
lace for an Indian Mahara-
jah in 1928. She first started
making Lego-based jewelry
in 2007 after visiting a
new Lego store and getting
hooked on the Danish toy
building bricks.
Boucheron’s use of white
platinum, and his departure
from flat, two-dimensional
jewelry design, inspired
her, Oye said. She used
hundreds of Lego pieces
from donated sets as well
as used, rare, vintage pieces
from collectors. She started
by taking Boucheron’s orig-
inal sketch of his necklace,
enlarging it and putting it
on her wall. Then she traced
over the drawing, and used
it like a map.
“I dumped all the white,
black and yellow Legos on
the floor and started to play,
to see what shapes could
mimic the design of the
original necklace,” she said.
“One thing I love about
using Lego is how it reach-
es every part of the social
spectrum — male, female,
old, young — and across
cultures. It’s a great way for
people to connect with the
jewelry.”
SOLVEJ SCHOU VIA AP
This photo shows San Francisco jewelry artist Emiko Oye’s
2008 “Maharajah’s 6th” necklace, made entirely of Lego pieces.
On a recent day at the
exhibit, museumgoers ex-
citedly milled around Oye’s
necklace. Others gravitated
to a wall of beautifully
strange, sculptural brooch-
es and items, including
German jewelry artist Gerd
Rothmann’s “Die Goldene
Nase” nosepiece, cast in
gold from Boardman’s own
nose.
“This exhibit elevates
what we do as crafts
artists,” Oye said. “People
have no idea you can make
jewelry from these materi-
als, such as thumb tacks and
Legos, as art.”
Sandra Enterline, 56, a
jeweler in San Francisco,
began making jewelry in
high school before going to
art school to learn jew-
elry as a craft. Her 1998
“Queen Bee” brooch is
fabricated out of 18-kar-
at gold, on a bed of real
flower pollen, with a real
queen yellow jacket fixed
in the center and covered
by a dome of low-magnify-
ing glass.
She originally creat-
ed the brooch for a 1998
traveling exhibit honoring
then U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, who
loved brooches.
“I was thinking about
Madeleine, because she was
the queen bee,” Enterline
said. “Contrasting the
fragility of the bee with the
gold shows the brooch’s
high-low value. The bee is
on the same type of pin you
would have in a butterfly
collection.”
For those interested
in making jewelry using
unusual materials, Oye and
Enterline recommended
amassing a collection of
interesting items, and taking
a basic jewelry-making
workshop. Most of all, have
fun!
“Go into your kitchen
junk drawer. Get a glue gun,
get some wire, get some
pliers and start playing,”
said Oye. “I would collect
board games, and all the
little colorful pieces that
came with them. That’s also
a great place for people to
start.”
Los Angeles County Museum
of Art: http://www.lacma.org