Artist Perspectives: Contemporary Jewelry and Ancient Technique is a conversation featuring jewelry designer emiko oye; Nicole Jacquard, associate professor and head of the Jewelry, Metalsmithing program at Indiana University; Anya Kivarkis, artist, associate professor and area head of Jewelry and Metalsmithing at the University of Oregon; and Sasha Nixon, curator of A View from the Jeweler’s Bench: Ancient Treasures, Contemporary Statements.

Nicole Jacquard is an Associate Professor and Head of the Jewelry, Metalsmithing program at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. Her education includes a bachelor of arts from IU in 1991, and her first MFA from the University of Michigan. Nicole received her second MFA in 1995 while on a Fulbright Scholarship to Australia at RMIT University in Melbourne, and in 2004 Nicole returned to RMIT and completed her Ph.D. in Fine Arts. Nicole has had 6 solo exhibitions and participated in over 80 invitational/juried exhibitions in the USA, Europe, Asia + Australia. She has presented over 20 lectures on her work + and has had papers accepted to present at conferences in the UK, Australia, China, + the USA. Her work is published in over 30 of books, catalogues + websites, and her two solo catalogues, Personal Objects: Personal Spaces Catalogue and her self titled catalogue, Nicole Jacquard are both available through Charon Kransen Arts.

Anya Kivarkis received a BFA in Jewelry & Metalsmithing from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, and an MFA from the State University of New York in New Paltz in 2004. In 2007, she was the recipient of the Sienna Gallery Emerging Artist Award, and presented the solo exhibition titled, Blind Spot. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include Neo-Palatial: Objects of Virtue and Vice curated by Garth Clark, L’education Sentimentale at the Solidor Art Space in Cagnes Sur Mer, Extreme Beauty at the Glassel School of Art in Houston, Call + Response at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, The Sting at the Manchester Art Gallery, and The Surrealist Impulse at the Tacoma Art Museum. She has been invited as a Visiting Artist to the University of Georgia, California College of the Arts, the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, the PNCA and Oregon College of Art and Craft collaborative graduate program in Applied Craft and Design. Her work is included in collections such as the Tacoma Art Museum, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, The Rotasa Foundation, and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. She is represented by Sienna Gallery in Lenox, Massachusettes and Galerie Rob Koudijs in the Netherlands.

Sasha Nixon is a curator, jewelry historian, and practicing metalsmith. She received her MA from Bard Graduate Center in May of 2018. Her exhibition proposal, which was part of her final qualifying paper, was chosen for presentation via a competitive selection process. A panel of faculty members and the Director of the Bard Graduate Center Gallery chose her proposal for its scholastic merit and curatorial insight into the history of jewelry. Nixon’s exhibition will be the first in a series of exhibitions curated by recent graduates that Bard Graduate Center is launching to celebrate its 25th Anniversary.

emiko oye
is a San Francisco based artist. Inspired by haute couture, art history, New Wave/Pop music and everything Bowie, emiko oye creates colorful hand-crafted art jewelry from repurposedLEGO®. She thrives on the challenge of taking what’s familiar and turning it on its head to transform the mundane into a conversation-sparking experience. Using jewelry as a vehicle to tap back into the nostalgic root of childhood, to unearth memory through the tactile. She’s delighted by similarities found in both LEGO® and jewelry: hands-on-story-telling capabilities, increased value with vintage, dedicated collectors, family heirloom. By utilizing an unexpected but universally familiar material such as LEGO® in her jewelry, the onlooker is lured in by his/her own narrative, creating an immediate, personal engagement with the work and likely to share their joyful experience with others.
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