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Artist Profile

SkLO: Object, Vessel, Light, Intention

Press, Artist ProfileApril HigashiComment
Catch, by SkLO

Catch, by SkLO

Sklo, the Czech word for glass, is also the name of a collaborative multi-disciplinary design studio headquartered in Healdsburg, CA, specializing in glass objects and lighting. The decision to name the business SkLO may seem clear, especially given that SkLO works directly with Czech Republic-based glassmasters. However, like every other aspect of this design studio, founded by Pavel Hanousek, Karen Gilbert, and Paul Pavlak, an underlying deliberation of intention distinguishes its work — right down to the very name under which it operates. 
 

Hold Sconce, by SkLO

Hold Sconce, by SkLO

“When were brainstorming about what name to give to our new venture, all three of us were immediately taken by the word [sklo],” explains Paul Pavlak. "It has great visual appeal, too. Karen and I did all the branding and logo design ourselves. Designing the logo, we felt that since we were basically naming our company glass we wanted to find a few subtle moves to make it unique."
 

Float, by SkLO

Float, by SkLO

Paul, an architect, had fun playing around with the graphic look and capitalization possibilities of the name. "The small k worked really well graphically, and then we added the plus-sign as a sort of symbolic reminder, that we are more than just glass, that the concept of SkLO is to go beyond the traditions and techniques of glassblowing and re-present what czech crystal can mean," Paul explains.
 

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This re-presentation of work is certainly making others sit up and take notice. In the past few months, SkLO has shown its work at the NY NOW-Accent on Design in August Paris trade show Maison & Objet, one of the biggest trade shows in Europe. In July, in July, SkLO’s Fold Vessel made the long list for the World Interior News Awards
 

Fold, by SkLO

Fold, by SkLO

SkLO’s growth continues on a steady pace, thanks in part to the company having recently established distribution in the Czech Republic. This means that work can ship from either California or the Czech Republic, extending the company’s ability to serve clients worldwide and to allow SkLO to grow into the global brand it’s clearly destined to become. 
 

Grow, by SkLO

Grow, by SkLO

“The critical acclaim SkLO is receiving, as well as the amazing demand for the product, are both very exciting to us,” Paul notes. “Karen and I are very confident as designers and put a great deal of ourselves into SkLO, and to see it succeeding is rewarding.
 

Lasso, by SkLO

Lasso, by SkLO

SkLO’s objects and lighting, along with Karen Gilbert’s jewelry, can be seen at Shibumi Gallery through October 27, 2013.

Artist and Studio Jeweler Niki Ulehla at Shibumi Gallery

Artist Profile, PressApril HigashiComment

Opening Satuday, June 8 5pm-8pm

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Shibumi Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by San Francisco artist Niki Ulehla entitled One. Two. featuring jewelry made using hand-painted silk, gilded plastics and pearls. The opening will be held Saturday June 8th with a reception from 5-8pm and artist talk beginning at 5:30pm. The exhibition runs through July 28, 2013 at Shibumi Gallery. 

In this work Ulehla explores copies and multiples while embracing subtle differences that occur during the production process. Working in several series, Ulehla creates jewelry that explores concepts rooted in natural science. Species classification, reproduction, and hybridization, while not over-obvious, inform her pieces. The jewelry is composed of autonomous visual units of varying sizes such as hand painted silk framed in darkened silver or plastic tubing lined with gold. These units are either used to make a piece of pure repetition or are merged to make a variety of hybrid compositions. The effect is a logical yet unusually beautiful body of jewelry.

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Since earning her BA in drawing and painting from Stanford University, Ulehla has mastered the arts of marionette making, puppeteering and fine art jewelry. Her focus on studio jewelry in recent years has earned her an invitation to the prestigious Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show in, Philadelphia, PA and The Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington D.C.

 

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                                                  *opening is sponsored by Trumer Beer

CHAIN REACTION Opening Reception Saturday, April 20th 5-8pm

Artist Profile, EventsApril HigashiComment
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Studio Jewelers Erica Schlueter and Elliot Gaskin Explore the Tradition of Chain Making

Shibumi Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by contemporary art jewelers Elliot Gaskin and Erica Schlueter entitled Chain Reaction. This exhibition highlights the artists’ approach to the chain, featuring jewelry made using traditional chain making and knitting techniques. The opening will be held Saturday April 20th with a reception from 5-8pm and artist talk beginning at 5:30pm. Chain Reaction runs through May 26, 2013 at Shibumi Gallery.

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Elliot Gaskin combines darkened steel with yellow brass to forge large somewhat exaggerated chains that are both industrial and ornate. The necklaces fabricated for this show where inspired by the gates of the Chateau de Versailles and embrace an aesthetic of extravagance paired with a tradition of craftsmanship. Gaskin earned his Bachelors in Fine Arts from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, CA in 2009. He currently lives and works as a studio jeweler in Seattle, Washington. His work has been featured in recent notable group shows including FERROUS at Velvet da Vinci in San Francisco, CA.

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With an extensive background in textiles, Erica Schlueter has combined her skill sets to create jewelry by knitting delicate silver and gold chain. By using fiber processes to make fine jewelry, Schlueter elevates the humble act of knitting and highlights the simple beauty of repetition. Schlueter’s background is in fiber and textiles. She brings this training into her jewelry, which she has been making for over 10 years. Her work can be found in galleries across the United States.

Maya Kini: Silk

Press, Artist ProfileApril HigashiComment

An Interview by Susan Cummins for Art Jewelry Forum

01 March 2013

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Jeweler April Higashi runs Shibumi Gallery in Berkeley, California. She shows mainly local jewelers and American jewelers who make well-designed, wearable work. Her gallery is located in a retail/manufacturing area, and her living quarters are right above the gallery. It is a wonderful space. April has discovered a lovely maker named Maya Kini,who is having her first full-scale solo show, Silk, at the gallery. Maya brings a complex background to her work.

Susan Cummins: Maya, can you tell me about your background? Your place of origin? Your schooling? How you became a jeweler?


Maya Kini: I was born and raised in the Boston area, the fourth of five children by parents from vastly different worlds. My mother is Italian American from New England, and my father emigrated from India in 1957 to get his PhD. He decided to stay in the US after meeting my mother. From a young age, I was given jewelry by visiting Indian relatives—bangles, anklets, and fine gold chains. Adornment begins at a young age in India and evolves into a complex language of beauty, wealth, and status.

I studied sculpture and literature at Reed College and eventually wrote my thesis on the translation of Catholicism and its earliest dispersion into New Spain. I received my degree in Spanish literature in 2000. In 1996, I was introduced to jewelry making in Mexico, and that seed developed into further study, apprenticeships with other jewelers, and eventually an MFA in metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art. I received my degree in 2007 under the guidance of Gary Griffin (2005–2006) and Iris Eichenberg (2006–2007). Currently, I operate my own small studio that focuses on commissions, multiples, and one-of-a-kind pieces.

I love the relationship between jeweler and patron—this sustained tradition of knowing where a piece of jewelry comes from and whose hands have crafted it. There are few objects with which we adorn ourselves that allude to both ritual and beauty. Jewelry has captured this unique place.

As an instructor at the University of California–Davis Craft Center, can you talk about the program and give us an example of a project you like to assign to your students?

Maya Kini: My husband and I moved to Sacramento in 2007. He is the director of a housing-policy organization, so proximity to the capital is important. I wanted to stay involved in the jewelry world and discovered the UC Davis Craft Center in 2008, after our daughter was born. It is a laidback place, separate from the art department and accessible to the students and staff at UC Davis and to the greater community. I have a wide range of students, from geneticists to ecologists to artists. The Craft Center offers the usual assortment of applied arts with some great access to glass fusing, casting, lampworking, blacksmithing, and furniture making. I teach lost-wax casting. Typically we begin by carving rings and creating texture. I try to introduce students to the advantages of casting for creating complex surfaces, incorporating found objects, and tempting serendipity—letting go of one’s original intention and discovering the potency of the mistake. Beginning casting is a particularly good medium to illuminate this aspect of of making. 

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There seem to be three elements that contribute to your exhibition. Can you describe the role of silk, of cast metal, and of the story that goes with it?


Maya Kini: This show developed out of my thesis work at Cranbrook and a series of objects my Indian grandmother carried with her in her purse. There were mundane objects—dentures, bobby pins, and handkerchiefs—and also ornate gold jewelry. Essentially, she had all of the jewelry she owned in her purse at the time of her death. I imagined what an archaeologist might do with such an archive, and so I studied it, cataloged it, and eventually wrote a series of short stories based on these objects. I then attempted to develop a language based on these cataloged objects to make jewelry. While the resulting pieces were largely unsuccessful, that was the first time I cast silk, and I fell in love with the texture and the process of casting. I decided then to focus on the silk and its translation into metal. In that process, I discovered the palette, textures, and forms that I had been looking for. 

How did the idea for this show develop?

Maya Kini: We visited India in 2009–my first visit there as an adult. We went to a government silk factory where the workers take the silk through the entire process, from boiling the cocoons to spinning the thread, dying the thread, weaving the silks, and embellishing them with the zari (metallic thread). While on that trip, my aunt gave me a pile of saris woven in the Indian city of Benares in the 1960s. The saris were made of silk georgette with silver embroidery. They had belonged to my grandmother, but the silk was now so fragile that they could not be worn without tearing.

The saris sat in my studio until I had the idea to cut out small sections with the silver embroidery, back them with wax, and take them through the lost-wax process. The resulting pieces often emerged looking more moth-eaten than when they had gone into the molds. But, I found that the silver woven into the original sari material did not burn out in the mold. Instead, it became embedded into the casting. This was a lovely discovery, for it meant that there was part of the original cloth in the new casting. It fell in line with how I think about the process of casting in general, which is a way to generate something imperfectly related to the original rather than a perfect copy. 

The sculptor Rachel Whiteread (who uses casting to illuminate the space between things, or the space we don’t often consider) says this of the process of casting:

A cast of an object traps it in time, eventually displaying two histories–its own past and the past of the object it replicates. The perfect expression of this is the death mask. It captures all the physical accretions of the human face soon after that face has completed its living existence but before rigor mortis accelerates it towards disintegration. It remains in the world to remind us of the dead as both portrait and memorial, a replica of an object in its own right. 

For me, the silk is material—strong, soft, and lavish. The metal is a neutral space where the texture and embellishments on the silk can come alive and be preserved, and the story relates these materials back to the people they will outlive. 

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Are you expressing the “cycle of generation, decay, and transformation” as the gallery press release states? Explain.


Maya Kini: There is one piece in the show calledRegeneration made from a slab of bone with all of these bits of metal that were made by pouring molten metal into water. The metal bits appear to be growing out of the bone like lichen. That piece may be the most succinct at expressing a cycle of generation, decay, and transformation. My general perception of material, especially metal, is that it is not static. Why do we work with metal? Perhaps, ultimately, because it is a sustainable material. And what does that mean? That we are always beginning in the middle, starting a new piece with the scraps of another, stringing together shards of many works to make a new thing. It is with this absurd hope that the things we make might persevere that our hands stay busy, skirting the edge of the scrap yard, the rim of the crucible. 

Can we as humans connect with the life of an object? Explain.

Maya Kini: I love this last question. In my studio, I have a poem by Jorge Luis Borges called “To a Coin.” In it, he describes throwing a coin from the deck of a ship, imagining the unconscious but parallel destiny of the coin alongside his own:

…I felt I had committed an irrevocable act,

Adding to the planet

Two endless series parallel, possibly infinite;

My own destiny, formed from anxieties, love and futile upsets

And that of that metal disc

Carried away by the water to the quiet depths…

We exist alongside all of these objects that will define us in our deaths—the things we wear, the things we carry in our purses, our books, our music, our art. We are intimately connected until we die, and then the objects go on. They connect to another person, develop new meaning, new significance. For me, it is difficult to imagine the things I have collected existing beyond my own lifetime, and yet, as a metalsmith, I know that they will. Like Borges in his poem, I have a little bit of envy and a little bit of remorse for the unconsciousness and the longevity of objects.

Thank you. That was a lovely ending. 

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Liisa Hashimoto: Light Fiction

Press, Artist ProfileApril HigashiComment

An interview by Susan Cummins for the Art Jewelry Forum 

05 November 2012

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April Higashi’s Shibumi Galleryin Berkeley, California, is having a wonderful show by Japanese artist Liisa Hashimoto. The installation of the show is very energetic and imaginative, like a playground. 
I understand that you live in Osaka, Japan, but went to school to learn metalsmithing in America. Is that correct, and if so, can you tell me who you studied with and where?
Liisa Hashimoto: Yes, I live in Osaka now. I have my studio here, too. After graduating from high school, I went to America and learned metalsmithing under Ms. Yoshiko Yamamoto at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
 

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Would you tell the backstory of how you got a show at Shibumi Gallery in Berkeley, California?
Liisa Hashimoto: Donna Briskin, an early board chair and longtime member of AJF, is an art collector who lives in Berkeley, California. She found my name through Klimt02 and visited my studio while in Japan two years ago. Last year, she came back to my studio with a travel group from the Art Guild of the Oakland Museum of California. She showed my works to April Higashi, owner of Shibumi Gallery, and she gave me a chance to exhibit.
What is the contemporary jewelry scene like in Japan? Please talk about the main schools and galleries in Japan as well as how the Japanese people respond to the work. 
Liisa Hashimoto: Contemporary jewelry is not too popular here in Japan as it is in America or in Europe. There are not too many galleries or shops that carry contemporary jewelry in Japan. I think that we Japanese are short and small compared to Western people, so we prefer smaller jewelry that is not too big or striking. Many people prefer jewelry that has brand names or real stones. Many of them enjoy looking at the contemporary jewelry, but only a few are eager to buy and wear it.
Probably the most well known school for jewelry making in Japan is Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelry. The school has locations in both Tokyo and Osaka. The Tokyo school was established more than twenty years ago. The Osaka school was opened in 2008 and is still quite new. Hiko Mizuno is connected to many contemporary jewelers worldwide and has visiting artists who give lectures in the schools. Many contemporary jewelers in Japan are graduates from Hiko Mizuno.

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Unfortunately, there are few well-known galleries in Japan—gallery deux poissons in Tokyo, Gallery C.A.J. in Kyoto, and Toi in Osaka. I am sorry to say that there are no other good galleries for contemporary jewelry in Osaka.
 You have called the show Light Fiction. Why?

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Actually, April Higashi chose the name, and this is what she says about it:

‘The show pairs the work of jewelry artist Liisa Hashimoto and the design studio of Anzfer Farms (Jonathan Anzalone and Joseph Ferriso). I chose the name Light Fiction because I felt the work created by all the artists in this show share the similar sensibilities of lightness, elegance, and playfulness found in nature. Observing manmade objects that have been left outdoors and the playful way nature integrates and embraces them over time inspires Liisa’s jewelry. Anzfer Farms uses reclaimed and found pieces of wood to create elegant yet unassuming sculptural lights and objects. I felt autumn, with its changes of colors and light, was the perfect season to show these artists. Their works embody the transformations of nature, the changing luminosity, and the temporal elegance of materials.”


The installation includes wire props to hold each piece. It gives an animated feeling, like a Calder circus or a large playground. What were you thinking about when you planned this?
Liisa Hashimoto: My installation was inspired by Calder’s Circus and his mobiles. Alexander Calder is one of my favorite artists! And for the show Light Fiction, my personal theme was ‘to the open air.’ As you wrote, I wanted to express the playground outside, coming out from the house. So, I made some of my pieces movable with brass wires to show them like a jungle gym. And most of all, I wanted to show the shadows through the installation. The shadows were important to think about, especially since having the chance to exhibit with Anzfer Farms, a lighting designer.

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f you were to invite some well-known jewelers to visit your studio, who would they be?
Liisa Hashimoto: There are so many jewelers that I admire, but if I could only invite one I would like to ask Mari Ishikawa, a well known Japanese jeweler living in Munich, Germany. Her works are all beautifully inspired by nature with the background of Japanese culture—the colors, shapes, etc. I get inspiration from nature and natural things myself, so Mari’s works stimulate me a lot. Fortunately, I had the chance to attend her slide lecture in Osaka this year. Her personality is also very nice, and I can see her strength and sensitivity toward her work, too. But, I did not have a chance to invite her to my studio. So next time if I have a chance, I would like Mari Ishikawa to visit my studio.
Thank you.

Link to Art Jewelry Forum Article and more info this organization.