Investigating the Collection: Comets and Curves, Bongsang Cho's Newest Work

Bongsang Cho

Specialty: Jewelry, utilizing modern technology to surpass previous restrictions

Most Recent Craft Show: American Craft Exposition 2013

Upcoming Craft Show: Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show 2013

In Bongsang Cho’s world, geometry is the language which connects humanity and nature, going from the inorganic to the organic and back again. Endeavoring to express this in the vocabulary of his art, he has produced several series of work which continue undergoing refinements. Currently there are two of these unique bodies of jewelry on which he is focusing his efforts.

To understand his geometric Comets brooches, one must first venture into the stars; Cho’s stars, that is. In another branch of his work, Cho utilized enamel and silver and gold flakes to produce starry skies and multi-hued, metalliferous forms he titles his Stellar series. Starting from one geometric collection of enameled panels, Cho stretched the form off fractally, but at each point maintaining the connection between each extension. Either dappling the shape with an enamel gradient, or, by taking a pure black form, studding it with gold leaf or metal granules, he orchestrated his interpretation of the cosmos.

Comet Brooch & Pendant Series #1, of copper, vitreous
enamel, and 23 karat gold leaf, 4” x 4” x 1.5” inches, 2012.

From this line, one can see the precursors to his more recent Comets work. In the wire frameworks and enamel panels of this series, he forms the celestial object’s tail and head; abstract, modern interpretations translated into a brooch. Using geometric forms, pentagons, either symmetrical or with some lopsidedness, with a wire framework behind which lightly imitates the foreground shapes, Cho’s meteorological representation comes into focus. For some of these pieces, such as Comet #6, the abstraction of the form almost leads to it looking like a botanical entity, something Cho favors in much of his work. The “flower” is five enameled panels, like petals, with enamel splashes that intimate the flower’s stamen, pistil, and other assorted innards.

Comet Brooch & Pendant Series #6, of copper,
sterling silver, vitreous enamel, and 23 karat
gold leaf, 3” x 2” x 1” inches, 2012.

With his Splash and Orbit series, we see elements from Stellar, but also the developed wirework that emerges in his Comets and previous Blossom suite. In fact, through Cho’s oeuvre one can see characteristics developed in one series being incorporated into another, but played with and altered. Here, he gambols with the wire to create reckless circles and curves that are dotted with silver balls, like thorns on a rose, vines or barbed wire, that makes the brooch visually outstanding. It projects a mood, perhaps curiosity, perhaps aggressive, but certainly not silence. However, this visual chaos eventually resolves itself, as the motif of wild curvature rebounds throughout the piece. Cut aluminum panels are covered with squiggly spirals, which echo the steel wire ellipses. A splash of enamel and cast copper introduces color and contrast, the molten form at odds with the sharp, clean cut surfaces of the silver-hued flanges and dark
steel circles.

Splashing & Orbit Brooch & Pendant #2 of splash cast copper,
23 karat gold leaf, vitreous enamel, laser welded steel, silver granules,
and aluminum, 3.50” x 5” x 1.50” inches, 2011.

That each series is distinct (sometimes so noticeably as to appear to be from different artists), yet retaining stylistic genes between them demonstrate Cho’s dedication to expression. As he continues to explore the earth and the heavens, there will undoubtably be new ground to cover.

Comet Brooch & Pendant Series #4 (left), #5 (right), of copper, sterling silver, vitreous enamel, and 23
karat gold leaf, 3” x 3” x 0.5” inches (left), 3” x 2” x 0.5” inches (right), 2012.

Poet of Papyrus: Francesca Vitali

Francesca Vitali
Specialty: Jewelry, exploring paper as a medium
Most Recent Craft Show: Washington Craft Show
Upcoming Craft Show: None Planned for 2013

Paper. It's usually something you write on, or put into your printer, or hold between your hands as a magazine or a book. Although the modern day has brought the material into use in the wearable art field, few have dealt with it so originally and spectacularly as Francesca Vitali, an Italian who immigrated to the United States. Although trained as a chemist, Vitali found inspiration in American propensity to shift careers within the course of one's life.

Satelliti (Satellites) brooch of repurposed paper, sterling silver; woven, 2010.

  
    Craft was not unfamiliar to her, however; indeed, as a young girl she was already making jewelry. Paper was quickly realized as a useful medium for her early experimentation; she recalls, “The first piece that I have ever made of paper was a very long necklace made of strung paper beads, and the paper was from a clothing line catalog. I’m amazed I still remember that!” It was the endless range of colors available from magazines and other publications that lit her imagination. Just by re-using old paper products, she had a limitless palette to choose from.

A Mano Libera Series, Aspide (Freehand Series, Asp) necklace of recycled paper, sterling silver, nylon coated steel cable; woven, 2011.

    Vitali’s self-taught techniques yield suprising results. Most of her pieces are composed of many tight composite folds, which then are wound around each other to produce organic and geometric shapes. Each fold exposes the color of the glossy paper, and Vitali makes sure to add in variation to make for spicy designs. A coiling spiral wave form made from gold and white paper, with a black border is threaded through with wire to make a necklace; the voluminous shape is as magnificent a pendant as any gemstone. The piece, Aspide, or Asp, is broad enough to almost be a pectoral. Vitali’s work uses weaving techniques to achieve this luminous final product. This series, A Mano Libera, takes a single long woven element which is then shaped in a manner similar to a freeform drawing.

Connessioni (Connections) necklace of recycled paper, magnet; woven, 2012.

    “I have mastered my weaving technique and my new challenges are striving to find new structures, new shapes and new ways of transforming paper,” she says. An example of these challenges is her new piece Connessioni. “The new necklace was inspired by one of my favorite color combination (red/black and white) and paper combination (repurposed paper/book pages). I wanted to connect all these elements into a necklace made only of paper,” Vitali explains. “And of course the name of the piece “Connessioni” means connections!”

    In contrast to A Mano Libre, in Connessioni the paper itself is the necklace, “wire”, clasp and all. The interwoven connection between red and white paper appears to be not only functional, providing some give to the necklace, but also a visual centerpoint. Abbraccio is another completely paper design which features a closure at the back, like a torque. Simply shaped, here it is Vitali’s use of color that commends the piece; the glossy purple, pink and deep red are a resonant combination.

Abbraccio (Embrace) necklace of repurposed paper; woven, 2012.

    Francesca’s description of the creative state pays homage to that same ineffable source of inspiration that many artists relate to. “Mostly I work at night in my studio, when the rest of the house is quite and asleep,” Vitali explains. “That is a magic time of my day, as a matter of fact my studio is a small sunroom with three walls made of windows, so I’m practically in the middle of the dark. On one side there is a hill and the rest is just neighbors backyards. Everything is still except my hands and my brain. I spend most of my time weaving while thinking of new pieces, just writing about it puts me in that happy state that I’m not sure I can really describe… I just want to make a new piece!”

Selection of Vitali's work at her booth in the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show 2012.

    As part of her picking up a new career in the United States, Vitali has taken many classes in order to learn metalsmithing techniques to incorporate into her work. Early admirers of her jewelry will remember her aluminum cuff "sheller" or "shelly" bracelets, where only a quarter of the diameter of the circular design contains woven paper. The paper provides the color, rendering the piece a picture of elegant simplicity. Vitali has worked metal into a number of her pieces, however has recently found herself trending back to using paper alone.

“For years, I have worked a lot on paper and metal, always trying to figure more ways to combine these two elements,” she describes, “but recently in the past year and half I found that I’m very attracted by paper only. In a way I’m going back where all started. The only difference now is that I’m doing it as a conscious choice over incorporating other material.”

Having come full circle, Vitali is juggling her jewelrymaking with her baby daughter, Penelope. Continuing to impress, her vibrant and unusual pieces stand out in both technical skill and aesthetic sense. Who knew paper could be so fashionable?

More of her work can be found here.

Illusione Ottica (Optical Illusion) bracelets of repurposed
paper; woven, 2012.

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.

Steel Corsage: Bongsang Cho

Bongsang Cho
Steel Corsage

Specialty: Jewelry, utilizing modern technology to surpass previous restrictions

Most Recent Craft Show: Smithsonian Craft Show 2012

Upcoming Craft Show: American Craft Exposition 2012


Bongsang Cho came to the United States from Seoul, South Korea, and brought with him a dedicated enthusiasm for metalsmithing, and an ethereal sense of grace and impermanency which gives a delicacy to his metalwork. He graduated from Hanyang University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Metals and Jewelry, and has recently graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a MFA, where he utilized several modern pieces of machinery in the college's jewelry department, such as the laser welder, to break new ground.

Cho's aesthetic is derived from the mysterious connections he senses between the organic, the artificial, and humanity. The flower is for him a metaphor which represents the essential nature of life, and extends beyond flora to embodying human existence, its connections and its transitoriness. The roots of the flowering plant are the same as the hidden relationships which support each individual life. It is for this reason that, abstractly and in literal interpretation, Cho uses the form of the flower in much of his jewelry and sculpture.

Night Blossom Brooch, of steel, sterling silver,
enamel, 24 karat keum boo, laser welding and
enameling, 7.5" x 3.5" x 2.5", Winter 2011

From the mammoth to the miniature, one can find this theme expressed, whether abstractly or literally, in his forms. A large copper sculpture of a flower, with spoon-like elements clustered together in the center for the plant's stamen, is like a prehistoric precursor to his delicate flower brooches of steel and silver, down to the hammered indentations on the protruding, arcing petals. The relation between the two is palpable, but for scale.  And yet Cho has many ways of exploring the flower form, which branch out themselves like pan-dimensional petals.

Tools, Enthusiasm, and Life #3, of copper,
enamel and 23 karat gold leaf, forging and
enameling, 48" x 16" x 12", Summer 2011

Stellar Brooch series, of copper and enamel, laser welding and enameling,
4" x 2.25" x 1.5", Spring 2012

For example, his more recent enameled and laser-welded Stellar Brooch series represent his underlying motif in abstract form. The highly geometric shapes of these brooches render them seemingly inorganic, but with splashes of color, and bearing out the vague outline of the form, Cho suggests the organic in the inorganic abstract. The folds of the piece become the petals of a Cubist flower. Cho is quite proud of this series, in part because the laser-welding process allowed him to bypass a previous restriction of enameling, that it can't be traditionally soldered after completion. Technology allows him to bypass this barrier to new artistic effect, and that is part of his pleasure in this series. The Night Blossom Brooch also exhibits use of the laser welder, Cho's favorite tool. The little sterling silver balls that dot the piece were attached using the machine.

Another brooch piece is literally a flower; the front stage actor which casts an elongated shadow across the backdrop, forming a waving crowd of hands. The flower represents a person or a life in many of Cho's pieces. Here, the flower takes the place of a human singer, actor or other performer, but also might represent many people, as the panoply of cast shadows imply. The feeling of a stage set and the evocative jubilance of people in the background conjure up the feeling of a rock concert that makes the Silhouette Brooch series exciting and emotive.

Silhouette Brooch series, of steel, aluminum, copper and pigment, laser
welding and enameling, 3.5" x 2.5" x 1", Fall 2011

Wild Life Brooch series, of copper and enamel, laser welding and
enameling, 3" x 2.5" x 1", 2" x 1.5" x 1", Spring 2012

Bongsang was born near Seoul, and thus grew up with the expansive urban environment of that city. From this, a more intimate association with construction must have led to his urban flower, composed of hard hats on enameled wire spirals, the black suggesting unpainted metal or industrial corrosion. The hard hats are the lives of the workers, who bloom from their own soil of a sorts, the asphalt and concrete of the city. The Wild Life Brooch series seems to suggest an admiration of this occupation by the artist, to typify it so as a flower. That which is deemed ordinary is also everpresent and essential to the tapestry of the living environment in which it resides.

Bongsang came to the United States after a meeting with Professor Komelia Okim in Korea. After attending a lecture by Okim, and having a conversation about American life, Cho traveled to the United States. He has been an assistant to veteran jeweler Namu Cho. He has now applied and been accepted to several craft shows, and will be attending more at the end of this year.

His work can be seen at www.bongsangcho.com.

Winter Night Brooch series, of fine silver and copper, laser

welding, 4.5" x 1.5" x 1", Spring 2012

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.