Journal Postings: Kathleen Janvier
| (07/21/10): In Stock Taiwan |  Just a quick note about an upcoming show that sprouted from Amsterdam… In Stock Taiwan is the fourth installment of the jewelry pop-up store from Ineke Heerkens, Jantje Fleischhut, and Jeannette Jansen. The shop, which is meant to bring art jewelry closer to a wider public, collects five multiples from each artist and presents them in a “hardware store” setting with plastic packaging and more manageable prices. Previously shown in Munich and Amsterdam, In Stock will now travel to Taipei as part of Taiwan Designers’ Week 2010 where Yu-Chun Chen and Min-Ling Hsieh will direct the exhibition from September 3 to 12. Jantje Fleischhut, whose involvement in Redlight Design brought the exhibition to de Wallen in December, asked me to participate in this latest rendition along with Redlight interns Sarah Mesritz and Claudio Bracco. Please take a look at the exhibition blog where you can see images of the collected works. instock-taiwan.blogspot.com/ |
| (07/13/10): A presto |  But for now I am glad to be back in Athens working as a receptionist in an architecture office and assisting my former professor Mary Hallam Pearse with her studio jewelry. Turns out I won’t be here long though, since I was recently accepted to The University of Georgia Graduate School and Cortona Studies Abroad Program for the fall! Thankfully, the remainder of this Fellowship along with the UGA Kehoe Scholarship will fund most of my tuition and allow me to work as a jewelry studio/teaching assistant to Professor Rob Jackson during my studies in Italy. I’m looking forward to the structure of school, the freedom to make, and that familiar Tuscan studio that can’t help but breed growth. |
| (07/12/10): Delux aan de Amstel |  Just before our trip north, Redlight Design decided to put on one last show and invite their interns to be a part of it. And so, as part of ‘Delux aan de Amstel,’ I get to have my work shown with pieces by Gésine Hackenberg, Iris Nieuwenburg, Jantje Fleischhut, Claudio Bracco, Sarah Mesritz, Susanne Klemm and Atelier Ted Noten! The exhibition, which will be shown at Galerie Weesperzijde in Amsterdam until 4 July, reveals pieces and inspiration from each artist’s experiences in the Redlight Design Project. I wish I had been there to help install and see everyone at the opening. One day I will be everywhere at once… |
| (06/29/10): Peaches to apples |  And home is where I stayed… for a little while. At least until Sarah came to Atlanta for our real American road trip to New York! After her internship with Jantje ended in the Redlight, she built an opportunity for herself in the States; and I felt it my prideful obligation to repay her generosity in Holland with a southern-guided tour of the east coast. So we rented a car (well, two after a rock hit the windshield in North Carolina) and drove from Atlanta to Athens to Charlotte to Washington DC to Annapolis to New York City, spurred on by country music stations, pink jeweled mega churches, and Cracker Barrels, and the occasional trucker stop. After following the Holland Tunnel to New Amsterdam, we stayed with a painter named Katie Commodore who had visited the Redlight Project as an artist in residence almost a year earlier. Together, we spent the next couple days touring the city, visiting the permanent jewelry collection and ‘Dead or Alive’ exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design, and helping Sarah get acquainted with her new home.
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| (06/29/10): Koninginnedag |  And because it is cheaper to buy round trip tickets, I had just enough time back in Amsterdam to experience the country-wide garage sale that is Queen’s Day, see the famed tulips of the Keukenhof, and wave one last early morning farewell before heading home for good. |
| (06/29/10): Wat is the Wat |  Though my travel through Thailand was not funded by the Fellowship (as it was not intended to be a research trip), it was only possible because of the long-term connections I made through my supported time in Amsterdam. That is the real opportunity imbedded in the Windgate; the people, the relationships, and the continually opening doors that emerge after the initial gift. And so, knowing this, I donned my first real backpacker’s sack and set out with Sarah and our Lonely Planet as my guides. We spent two weeks traveling North from Bangkok (where we visited the amulet market and innumerable Buddha statues just before the political protests sadly turned to riots) to the historic wats of Ayutthaya and Sukhothai. From there we spent four days celebrating the Thai new year with endless water fights in Chiang Mai before trekking the hills of Chiang Rai and heading back down for a week at Rock Sand on Koh Chang. Everything was new. Everything an experience and a memory. |
| (06/29/10): Couch surfing Holland |  With our internships completed, Sarah and I found ourselves wandering from her grandparents’ home in Delft to her sister’s place in Den Haag before finally arriving at her mother’s (just across the border into Belgium). There we spent a spoiled Easter taking her dog on walks through the woods, eating long brunches, and preparing for our backpacking trip through Thailand! |
| (06/29/10): Delux Turns the Lights Out |  In the days leading to the end of Redlight Design, I spent my time helping Gesine clean and paint her new studio space at ‘Broedplaats de Vlugt,’ cut wine bottles for serving water at the project’s goodbye party, helped Gesine, Jantje, Sarah, Claudio, and myself move out of our respective redlight houses, and tried to grasp leaving as I was only just beginning to feel settled. At least that timeline is shrinking; it took me five years to feel comfortable the last time I moved. We had a good time at the Delux closing party, even if those moments are always a little bittersweet. There was a bonfire, a DJ, and a flood in one of the houses; so I’d call it a success. The next few days were quietly busy. A few more dinners with the interns, one last boat ride on the canals, another slice of apple pie, and an afternoon delivering the rest of the rememoratives to their studio owners. Selling my Gazelle was the necessary moment of finality before Sarah and I said goodbye to Claudio, locked the doors, and headed for the train station. |
| (06/27/10): Rememoratives |  Returning to Amsterdam lead to a whirlwind of events, which began with finishing a handful of pieces before we began packing up the Redlight studios for the inevitable move in April. After floundering in indecision for a while, I’d finally decided to make two pieces connected to each of the studios where I worked: one small slice of gratitude for each artist I spent time with and one physical internalization to help me remember what they taught. Each piece combines elements and materials from the work of the artist for whom it is meant with some mark of my own to create a somewhat mixed sensibility. I then displayed the works (along with a timeline of the days I spent in each studio) in one of Gesine’s windows during the final Redlight Design party. It will be a while before I can fully digest all I have learned from these artists and this city, and I am looking forward to the gentle influence these experiences continue to have on my making and my life. |
| (06/27/10): Paris in the springtime |  In the middle of March I took the new Thalys track to Paris and visited Aude Medori, who had just moved back to Montmartre after living in de Wallen with the rest of us for three months while she worked with Frederic Braham. I hadn’t seen the city since I was fourteen and was immediately enamored with it all over again. We ate oeuf cocotte au foie gras, watched a circus of first graders wander the streets as paper elephants, stood in line at Pierre Hermé, and hurried past mediocre portrait painters and carousels on our way to jewelry galleries (particularly Galerie Elsa Vanier and Galerie Hélène Porée). Our friend Sarah Mesritz, who worked with Jantje Fleischhut and lived in the Redlight houses longer than we did, joined us a couple of days later to go museum hopping. Most impressive were Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (where contemporary pieces were hidden amongst hunting trophies and stuffed animals),Les Arts Décoratifs (where we saw a fantastic exhibit of historic to contemporary jewelry), and La Librairie Alain Brieux (which was showing the drawings, watercolors, and fabric work of Jean-Bernard Gillot’s ‘Sciences-Techniques-Medecine’). Our last day was spent drinking coffee atop Tour Montparnasse, walking around Notre Dame, and watching Aude’s sister perform in a small acting troupe. It was a lovely weekend; a good visit with friends and another inspiring trip to add to the books. |
| (06/24/10): Window lust |  I came back from Munich exhausted but excited and ready to work on a few things for myself. But first I needed a new display for the window. Keeping contextualization in mind from the last installations, I attempted to influence the viewer’s perception of a specific object (in this case a heart-shaped balloon) by manipulating its orientation and taking its social surroundings into consideration. Simply hanging the balloon upside down in the middle of the redlight district seemed to replace its references to love with those of a playful lust. It was a fun experiment, if nothing else.
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| (06/22/10): Schmuck (deel zeven) |  Another interesting aspect of the gallery exhibitions was their varying methods of display. Galerie Fur Angewandte Kunst simply used packaging material to tape white shirts to their walls where they promptly pinned the artists’ brooches. It was nice to see jewelry displayed somewhere other than behind glass for a week. Incredibly enough, there were still shows left unseen by the time I had to catch that train to the airport. I’ll do better next time… |
| (06/22/10): Schmuck (deel zes) |  The loud and crowded dinner at Augustiner was another highlight (though possibly only because we were early enough to get a seat). I ran into a few of the students from Dusseldorf who stayed in the Redlight Design house as part of Ted Noten’s Artist in Residence program and they introduced me to their professor who gave me a critique on the brooch I’d been wearing right there at the table. They also told me about the Zimmerhof jewellery symposium that takes place every summer in the German countryside; something to think about for the future… The next and final day, I went roaming around to the last few galleries with my friend Aude Medori who interned with Frederic Braham of Redlight Design, but who had recently moved back to Paris to get ready for a few upcoming exhibitions. She and I went back over to take one last look at the Donner-Rotunde before ascending the stairs to Giampaolo Babetto’s solo exhibition, which held incredible plans and drawings alongside his beautiful work. We then visited the gatehouse of a cemetery where the Estonian show specialPalace displayed pieces of fantastic sensitivity towards the grandeur of nature. We then fled the cold and snow of the cemetery by visiting “Eternal Shine – It’s Not a Pony” where mirrored boxes protruding from the walls played distracting roles in their display of fantasy driven work. |
| (06/22/10): Schmuck (deel vijf) |  The Danner-Rotunde of the Pinakothek held the most inspiring show of the week. Curated by Karl Fritsch, “Die Neue Sammlung” was exactly what I’d hoped to see in Munich: extremely high caliber work displayed in such a way as to suggest a sense of our collective making. Rather than highlighting seasoned makers, the works blend into each other to create a continuous strand of discovery. There were no names; no materials lists to disrupt the flow of objects. These were autonomous witnesses to making; only later claimed in equalized drawings on a map. I could have seen only this and been completely satisfied. Thankfully, however, there was still more to see. “Wenn Helden Zittern” showed the work of students from Tokyo, Munich, and London Guarded by a friendly enough monster, these young makers challenge the traditions of their predecessors. Many of whom could be found downstairs in the Rotunde. I was also excited to see the new work of Iris Eichenberg later that night as she served as my initial contact to the jewelers I would later work with in Amsterdam. Her work has a nostalgic sensibility of ambiguous loss that has always held me, and these latest Birds and Flowers of Michigan were no exception. |
| (06/22/10): Schmuck (deel vier) |  One of the more interesting aspects of the parallel exhibitions was their grouping by nationalities. Greek, Australian, and Czech shows (among others) were eye-opening in their revelation of national trends in art jewelry. “Also Known as Jewellery” explored French humor in the midst of boundaries imposed by their long affair with fashion. By facing the art vs. craft argument in the open, these makers are establishing a tradition of making right before our eyes.
The students of the Academy of Fine Arts Maastricht also demonstrated their excitement with a guerilla show of sorts by lining up in the crowded atrium of the Pinakothek Der Moderne and displaying their work in plastic bags held before them.
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| (06/22/10): Schmuck (deel drie) |  Some of the more impressive stalls held the likes of Galerie Ra of Amsterdam Galerie Marzee of Nijmegen, Koru (a Finnish collective), and Platina of Stockholm (which I found for the first time at the fair).
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| (06/22/10): Schmuck (deel twee) |  Schmuck itself, I learned the next day, is actually only one of many platforms at the annual Handcraft & Design Fair. Mixed among gallery stalls, school information booths, fancy kitchen stoves, and traditionally handmade accordions lies the litmus test for development in our field (the standards of which change every year with the tastes of the curator). Though designed to showcase up-and-comers, established makers also find space on the shelves. I was happy even to find a few of my own fingerprints in the show, as Gesine was chosen to display three new pieces made during my time in her studio. |
| (06/22/10): Schmuck 2010 |  March brought me to Munich where I reconnected with a friend from undergrad to explore what we could of Schmuck and all its related museum and gallery exhibitions. It was my first trip to the International Craft Fair; and despite warnings from seasoned attendees, I had grand delusions of viewing the entire program. So armed with comfortable shoes, a pocketful of business cards, and a heavy coat, I started off towards Galerie Isabella Hund where Bettina Dittleman and Michael Jank showed collectively forged rings from various metals alongside some of Dittleman’s new work. From there Miriam introduced me to some of her current classmates at Birmingham City University and took me to see “Life’s a Bench,” an exhibition of last year’s graduate work from the same school. Afterwards we did a bit of sightseeing at the Nymphenburg Palace and headed to “Dear James,” an exhibition of pieces inspired by the artists’ exchange of letters over a six-month period (pictured). Dormitory_Bauleitung_Laboratorio (a student show of video, installation, and performance) proved our last stop for the night. |
| (06/19/10): A lesson in layering | | In this second Redlight installation, context and mood again played a large role in interpreting the work being shown. Though I tried to reaffirm the nostalgic qualities of the piece, a less innocent flavor of longing was continually asserted by the surrounding neighborhood. I’d like to play with emphasis more in future work and think about methods of installation from the beginning. |
| (06/19/10): A lesson in layering |  bedframe brooch on mattress in Redlight window installation |
| (06/19/10): Mind the gap |  Once again I must apologize for my lapse in communication. February was a long time ago, and much has happened since that last installation. I continued working with Gesine (benefitting from her techniques in casting, milling, fabrication, and business practices along the way) and was so excited to trade pieces with her after admiring her work for so long! And so it was while wearing a beautiful necklace made from pearls of this lovely plate that I finally started filling out graduate school forms and applied to the UGA Cortona Studies Abroad program. |
| (02/08/10): Guest installation |  Despite the cold and snow, there have been many nice things to see in the last month. I served drinks at the opening of Alexander Blank’s solo exhibition at Galerie Rob Koudijs, tagged along with the Rietveld jewelry class excursion to the second showing of Lingam curated by Ruudt Peters, saw student work from each department of the Rietveld Academie during their annual Open Dag, and went to the opening of the Object fair in Rotterdam which showed quite a bit of jewelry along with product design, ceramics, and other applied arts. I’m finally starting to break into making for myself again too, beginning with an installation in one of Gesine’s Redlight Design windows. It’s nice to see a few pieces of my exit work in a contextualized setting. |
| (12/20/09): Home for the holidays |  And now I’m almost ready to start packing for home… but only for a couple of weeks! My new plan is to come back to the Redlight Project and continue working for Gesine two days a week and use the rest of my time to start working for myself in this unique atmosphere. And it looks like I’ll even be able to use one of her red light windows to display my developments. Looks like the new year will be pretty interesting…
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| (12/20/09): Naturae installation |  December meant Sinterklaas, the arrival of my friend Kathleen Kennedy, and the installation of Naturae, an exhibition by Evert Nijland and Terhi Tolvanen, which was shown for the first time outside of a regular gallery space. Rather than showing their jewelry in limited vitrines, they chose to display them in an open baggage hall. We spent a week installing large detail images on the walls, building custom “crate” pedestals, and working with a lighting designer to create an atmosphere that drew attention to the pieces without drowning them in light. It was a beautiful show. |
| (12/20/09): Red Light Thanksgiving |  If Thanksgiving hadn’t been the Thursday following my stay in Idar-Oberstein, I would have been very sad to leave indeed. But as it was, I had five hours of cooking in a microwave oven ahead of me. It was my first solo Thanksgiving dinner attempt (for eight people hailing from eight different countries, no less… none of whom had yet experienced my favorite of the American-style holidays). So it was with great pride and crossed fingers that I shared stuffed chicken (due to lack of turkeys and an oven big enough to hold one), green bean casserole, sweet potato soufflé, mashed potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, and fudge pie with all those crazy Redlight interns and a few new faces. I should be so lucky next year. |
| (12/20/09): Idar-Oberstein |  After my mom headed back home I was able to accept an invitation from Andrea Wagner to Idar-Oberstein, Germany where she was finishing her Artist in Residency with the Jakob Bengel-Foundation / University of Applied Sciences Trier. There I spent three days shaping and polishing stones at the school, visiting an antiquated large scale chain factory, enjoying lovely conversation over schnitzel with Andrea, and seeing what overall great experiences these residency programs have to offer. |
| (12/20/09): Family time |  My mom visited at the beginning of November and, naturally, we headed straight for Italy. We visited The University of Georgia Studies Abroad Program in Cortona where I studied over the summer of 2007 and where I’m hoping to return as a graduate assistant this fall. Then of course, we headed back to the Red Light (her reactions were priceless) and spent a week playing tourist, visiting museums, and introducing her to some of the jewelers I’m working with. It was really good to have her here, somehow connecting this life with my home. |
| (12/20/09): Rietveld excursion |  Manon, who heads the Precious Matter Jewellery department at the Rietveld Academie, invited me on a class excursion to see the “Art in Fashion” exhibition in Rotterdam and meet some of the students. I’m interested to see the school itself in a month or so and talk more about their course of study and how they are taught to be makers. |
| (12/20/09): Detour into glass |  I have, however, continued working with Evert Nijland and Manon van Kouswijk, each of whom have begun introducing me to other aspects of their making. Evert works closely with a glass worker named Edwin Dieperink who invited me to his studio for a quick lesson and some time to work for myself! Despite being a miserable train wreck and breaking even my one slightly less embarrassing attempt at glasswork, I had a great time and look forward to finding some way back to the flame. |
| (12/19/09): The long awaited |  Friends and family can attest to my less than exemplary correspondence record. (So sorry to those who didn’t see this coming.) I last posted just before my road trip through Scotland with a good friend of mine from home. (I’m required to leave The Netherlands periodically in order to stay on good terms with the immigration board, which is the best excuse to travel I’ve ever heard!) We landed in Edinburgh, rented a car, and started driving with the mantra “look right, drive left” constantly repeating at each intersection. A main point in our excursion, besides the incredible scenery, was a visit with a recent graduate from the Royal College who I’d met at an opening at Galerie Marzee. My talk with her turned into the beginning of my graduate school search, which is something that will continue for the next year. Returning to Holland, we visited friends living in Schoonhoven, a town known for it’s silver production and technical jewelry school, and attended the opening of an exhibition featuring the work of Gijs Bakker and Emmy van Leersum.
I was also supposed to work for Lucy Sarneel for the month of September, but (unfortunately for me) she was invited to give a lecture in Florence and I was only able to help her with a few small things one day at the end of the month. It was still a vastly beneficial experience, though, as Lucy is such an encouraging maker. It’s been nice running into her and others at various openings and events around town.
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| (12/19/09): Redlight Design |  The end of September brought the close of my internship with Katja and the beginning of a new one with Gesine Hackeberg. She is currently one of six jewelers whose studios have replaced former red light brothels and whose work is now displayed where prostitutes once stood as part of the city of Amsterdam’s Redlight Design Project (www.redlightdesignamsterdam.com). In addition to working with Gesine she has also given me a space to live above her studio, which means I am now living in the middle of the Red Light District nestled between ladies, a sex cinema, a kindergarten, and the oldest church in Amsterdam. It is definitely an interesting neighborhood, but there’s a great little community of interns here that makes the place feel “heel gezellig.”
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| (09/13/09): Amsterdam |  It has certainly taken some adjustment, but now that I’ve started collecting studio keys all over town and inventing new bike routes to avoid tourists, I’m finally starting to settle in to life here in The Netherlands. I’ve been working steadily one day a week with Katja, Manon, and Evert (and necessarily gaining more from them in conversation than I can ever repay in manual labor). They have all been incredibly warm and welcoming… inviting me over for dinner, out to gallery openings, and even to the movies! And they’ve all made it a point to open their studios to me and my own work as well. I’ve been doing quite a bit of mold making and porcelain casting (a new technique for me) with Evert and Manon, and learning how to solder with a blowpipe in Katja’s (at least technically) more traditional studio. Makes me feel like a real goldsmith! (spoken with clasped hands and starry eyes :) But now I must don my rain pants and bike off through the elements to one of many lectures in the Dutch Design Double series. Tot ziens! |
| (08/05/09): dank u veel | | Before I get into all that this incredible grant has allowed me to do so far, I would first like to thank the Center for Cnraft Creativity and Design as well as its staff (especially Dian Magie) and this year's panel members for making it all possible.
True to my word, the first purchase I made with the first check I received was a ticket to Amsterdam, where I am now writing this post at a corner cafe on the Haarlemmerdijk near my apartment. Thursday brings my first meeting with Evert Nijland who has asked me to assist him with work that will be shown in an exhibition curated by Tehri Tolvanen (the same show that I will be helping to install come December!). Over the next few months I will also be working with Manon van Kouswijk, Katja Prins, Lucy Sarneel, and Andrea Wagner. But for now my job is to wander aimlessly round the city all by my lonesome taking in all the bikes and canals and visiting some of the foremost art jewelry galleries in the world. Not bad at all. |
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who we are