EXTREME BEAUTY

"Extreme Beauty," a show curated by Kim Cridler, will be opening on March 5 for the 2010 SNAG conference, "Going to Extremes". I am so excited to be a part of this show- the artists participating are some of my all-time favorite metalsmiths. I nearly died when I saw the artist list. Kim Cridler did a fabulous job choosing metalsmiths whose work I wholly admire. The show represents 23 artists from 8 countries, showcasing work that questions and interprets beauty. Here are some of my favorite artists participating:



Lauren Kalman



Karl Fritsch



Andrea Wagner



Anya Kivarkis



Exhibition blurb by Kim Cridler:
Extreme Beauty features contemporary makers who pursue beauty and adornment through metalsmithing, jewelry and site-specific body works. The quest for beauty involves complimentary and contradictory approaches: dogged compulsion, alchemic-like processes, curiosity, joyfulness, and the simple desire to honor. But beauty is also at times bizarre, shrouded in our anxieties about the deceitful, and at times so longed for that it mutates into the grotesque. Works included in this exhibition engage a range of approaches from the devotional act of replication, to works that assume a critical or historical assessment of the problematic nature of beauty.