New Developments: Gender 3.0 by Hsiang-Ting Yen

Hsiang-Ting Yen
Specialty: Jewelry, utilizing modern technology and traditional Chinese aesthetics
Most Recent Exhibition: Thesis Exhibition Gender 3.0 (March – April 2012)
Upcoming Craft Show: Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show 2012

   Hsiang-Ting Yen has recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Now stepping out into the wide outdoors of the craft world, Yen has pioneered from the groundwork laid out by her thesis exhibition a new series of jewelry that is sassy and sophisticated.

Gender 3.0: Portraits, Andrej Pejic and Marlon Brando
of enamels, carbon steel, copper, glass beads, freshwater
pearl, and copper foil, 7" x 5" x .5", 2012.

    Yen's Gender 3.0 Brooch series has its roots in the various pieces of body sculpture and installation she created for her thesis exhibit, particularly her Portrait piece. Within a traditional painting frame, Yen embroidered faces of celebrities onto translucent fabric, then lined up every portrait diagonally so the viewer could see through every frame collectively. The composite image reflects the many interpretations of the masculine and feminine presented by the mainstream and historical media. For her newest incarnation of the Gender series, enameled panels with faces of famous persons are similarly arranged, like venetian blinds, as the centerpiece of an array of steel wire frames sprouting from the back like a Broadway sign. Yen creates these enameled portraits by first etching the outline of the portrait into the copper, then using enamel paint within the lines for the facial details. This is why the faces look like a sketch. Although depicting contemporary figures, the style seems to harken back to an earlier age. Turn of the century art movements, such as Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau and Art Deco seem to contribute their design sensibilities to the piece. Because of this conjoining of past and present, the piece possesses a poignant nostalgia, almost a sense of deja vu. And that's besides challenging the viewer to re-examine stereotypes.

Gender 3.0: Portraits, Lady Gaga and Audrey Hepburn
of enamels, carbon steel, copper, glass beads, freshwater
pearl, and copper foil, 7" x 5" x .5", 2012.

    There's a sense of motion to the piece, evoking a look that the word glamorous could authentically be attributed to. One can imagine some sort of neo-Jazz Age flapper girl at leisure with one of these brooches. The piece seems to call up Tamara de Lempicka, from the abstraction of layered half faces, to the confluence of angularity and curvature of the brooches. These aspects resonate with the elements that makes Lempicka's work seem to sway through space. The variegation in the enameled portrait evokes the essence of the almost cubist folds in fabric that Lempicka lavishly draped her portrait subjects in. This gestalt is Yen's aesthetic in Gender 3.0.

Portrait sequence of fabric, thread, and acrylic, from thesis 
exhibition Gender 3.0, Savannah, Georgia.

    Soon showing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, where she has exhibited in years past as part of SCAD's student booth, Yen has successfully transformed her conceptual thesis exhibit into a beautiful and challenging style of jewelry. As a counterpoint to her In Bloom series, which will also be exhibiting at the show, Yen shows her strength in establishing unique branches of aesthetic, both bearing considerable merit. As Yen has shown in her past work, her exploration of these themes will surely yield diversity and success.

Spring Garden: Jeweler Hsiang-Ting Yen

Hsiang-Ting Yen
Spring Garden
Specialty: Jewelry, utilizing modern technology and traditional Chinese aesthetics
Most Recent Craft Show: Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show 2011
Upcoming Exhibition: Thesis Exhibition Gender 3.0 (March 2012)

Hsiang-Ting Yen is a soon-to-be graduating student at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Originally from Taoyuan, Taiwan, she came to the United States to study jewelrymaking at the urging of her metalsmithing teacher.

While she's now a burgeoning jeweler, Hsiang-Ting's subject of study at National Dong Hwa University was business. While there, she worked under metalsmithing teacher Su-Ya Lin. Recognizing her true calling, Su-Ya encouraged the young artist to study Metals and Jewelry for her graduate schooling. This began Yen's odyssey to the United States, where she is about to graduate from the Savannah College of Art and Design, at its Savannah location.

Hsiang-Ting's work has had two directions; her thesis project, examining contemporary gender issues, and her In Bloom brooches, two evolving series of enamel work on wire forms. In Bloom springs from Yen's background in Chinese watercolor painting. The first series utilizes layers of graceful wire outlines to create the contours of flowers and leaves; opaque enamel fills in parts of the form, vividly bringing them to life. The layered outlines give the pieces dimensionality, raising the design towards the viewer. Thus with bare and subtle attention, Yen uses a minimum of material to yield maximum representation.

In Bloom Series #2 both builds upon the first and explores a very different direction. Inspired by the Gongbi style of Chinese water color, this second series of jewelry is explosively colorful. Now the flowers and leaves are more literal representations, gorgeously rendered in pastel pinks, blossom whites, reds, grasshopper green and magenta hues. Each flora has now been joined by a particular fauna; a monarch butterfly or hummingbird hovers or rests upon each piece. The more extensive enamel work changes the visual focus from the form and contours of the brooch, to the center, where the illustrated depiction is reinforced by the concentric circular forms that draw one's attention inwards.


What I find most impressive about Yen's work is her visual diversification from her first and second series. It is no easy feat to develop a new aesthetic, and yet it is clear from her work that she was able to borrow elements from her first series, and transform them through the alchemical process of creativity into a new form that both builds upon the old, and yet is distinct from it. The shift of drawing attention from contour and edge to the center is achieved with graceful simplicity.


Yen has found it easier to establish her own artistic voice here in the United States. As one of a new generation of jewelers, Hsiang-Ting is already exploring the creative potential of her dual circumstances, being a Taiwanese living in America.

Her work can be found at www.hsiangtingyenjewelry.com.