New Mexico jewelry artist Nina Morrow creates the most fantastic pieces from driftwood and other materials found along the Rio Grande. Each of her beads is cut and formed by hand. She uses a wood burner and cuts into the surface of the beads giving them an almost tribal quality. On some of her work, she dyes the beds bright shades of green, red or orange.
These pieces are extremely lightweight – the look of large jewelry without the weight. Each design is a handcrafted original.
Visit Gallery Five for more art jewelry by Nina Morrow and other jewelry artists.
Children's Blocks by Penelope Weinstein
Artist’s Statement
Penelope Weinstein creates one-of-a-kind art to wear jewelry from found objects. Each piece is entirely unique and incorporates a range of unusual materials, such as pencils, milk tokens, buttons, or bullet casings.
Penny’s unique art jewelry evolves from many years workng in various creative media including graphics, painting, collage, basketry and sculpture. Today her work focuses on the three-dimensionality of sculpture and jewelry. In creating this jewelry, she explores the interplay of antique and unusual objects with the textures of hand-knitted felted wool and other fibers.
Browse GalleryFive.com collection and Penelope Weinstein.
"Please Recycle" by Penelope Weinstein
Robert Rickard, best known at Gallery Five for his popular line of metal art clocks, also launched his Rickard Studio last year to reflect his broader scope of work – from his clocks to sculptures, furniture, wall pieces, and more. His new collection of sculpture, forged in stainless steel, and designed for indoor or outdoor use, is being embraced by master planners, architects, and developers as well as collectors.
Artist’s Statement
Robert Rickard’s contemporary home in the mountains above Taos, New Mexico can be characterized by infinite peace and silence. Except, of course, when he is in his spacious studio next door; then the sounds of tools working steel and aluminum reverberate across the valley.
Rickard’s work is incredibly vivid and yet very natural. The colors are reminiscent of the sunsets over the Rio Grande Gorge, which he sees from his studio. It is in that bright, airy studio that Rickard creates memorable pieces which harness the myriad properties of metals: their rigidity, their pliability, and their essential chemical make-up.
His is a scientific approach. After using a hand-held plasma cutter to carve his designs into the base metal, each sculpture is then coated with other metals; typically copper, bronze, and iron. Each of these metals reacts differently to the chemical patinas and dye oxides with which the pieces are finished, creating a rich palette of hues.
Rickard is an honored Niche Awards Finalist and is a juried participant in several exclusive shows. “I have been deeply humbled and grateful for the way that I have been welcomed into galleries and collectors homes,” says Rickard.
The Bo’s Art Opera Collection. Bozenna and Lukasz Bogucki names each of their uniquely designed metal mesh evening bags after a famous opera. The designer handbag “Tosca” (shown here) is stainless steel mesh with gator green and a cable handle, 10.5″ x 5.5″ x 3″. Stunning detail.
bias lace, double ruffle, white trim jacket by JES Irie Wear at Gallery Five
At Gallery Five we are celebrating one-of-a-kind and limited edition art to wear and fine crafts handmade in the USA. Today we are featuring a “white” jacket by Joyce Stewart of JES Irie Wear.
Artist’s Statement
As an artist and designer of wearables, I consider my work as sculpting fabric to flatter the body. I design and create my own patterns. Clothing should flatter the body, so my focus is on originality of design and fit. Different textures are mixed to create wonderful collages in some pieces, while other pieces of my work are stately and classic. The manipulation of machine tension is also used to change the appearance of the fibers. In the past, my work included painting on silk, but I’ve since become allergic to the pigments and had to forgo that element in my work.
I went to the school “MoM” for design and construction of clothing. I am doing what I truly enjoy — creating clothing that makes women feel good about themselves. Custom cutting is a large part of my creations.
Deck yourself out with a Carmen Miranda
crochet beaded necklace with colorful beads and vermeil clasp by Rickie Leiter
Artist Statement: Childhood experiences started me on a path of looking at nature with appreciation and awe. Collecting stones and shells from trips around the world always kept those pleasant memories alive in a special way. As each token became a necklace, I learned new ways to create art jewelry and thus a new path in my life’s journey began… and I am still “stepping out of the box.”
Each piece of jewelry I create is unique and distinctive — the design begins to reveal itself as I start to work with its elements. Beads of all kinds plus other materials one might not consider using for jewelry are part of my artist’s palette.
Pulling inspiration from their fine art backgrounds, Seattle area artists Jon and Tracy Haaland of Chemical Wedding strive to bring utility and wearablity to their art.
In 2003 Jon and Tracy teamed up to create a line of unique handcrafted leather handbags. They used new and scrap leathers together with hand-formed copper rings, intricate silk screen designs and their own brand of rustic hand crafted wood handles creating pieces of wearable art that are out of the ordinary. In a short amount of time their handbags have been seen in galleries and boutiques around the world from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Jon and Tracy handcraft each bag to order. The artistic process is what they love.
Handblown glass Megaplanet 3.5" diameter with a small flattened bottom
Josh Simpson contemporary glass sculptures are in galleries and museum throughout the U.S. and worldwide.
Gallery Five has a small collection of small hand blown glass planets and other spherical glass art sculptures, paperweights, and perfume bottles. Pictured here is an an imaginary planet with filigrana cane and precious metals, an original Josh Simpson design.
Artist Statement
Evolution is an apt word to describe the trajectory of my work — it is an organic process that happens over time and is full of trial and error. Thirty years into my career as a glass artist, I can look back and see the branching in the evolutionary family trees of my work. In the moment, when I am in my studio, I don’t think about where I’ve come from, I merely ask the next question of myself and the glass and move toward its answer.
Thirty years ago, I started out focusing on making goblets because to me they represented the ultimate challenge for a glass artist. I spent seventeen years seeking the perfect goblet. But that wasn’t all I did during that time. With the goblets and then planets, vases, and iridescent glass, as with all my work, I have always learned by experimenting and doing. I usually work at something until I’m satisfied I’ve got it right. I always seem to have more ideas than I’ll ever have time to make.
Inspiration
The last thing I do before I go to bed is walk out to my studio to check the furnaces. Seeing an aurora borealis, or watching a thunderstorm develop down the valley, or just looking up at the sky on a perfect summer night inspires me to translate some of the wonder of the universe into my glass. That wonder comes out in my work, not in any purposeful way but slowly. My work evolves in such incremental steps that I often don’t recognize the natural influences until someone points them out to me.
Along with the natural world, my motivation comes directly from the material itself. Glass is an alchemic blend of sand and metallic oxides combined with extraordinary, blinding heat. The result is a material that flows and drips like honey. When it’s hot, glass is alive. It moves gracefully and inexorably in response to gravity and centrifugal force. It possesses an inner light and transcendent radiant heat that makes it simultaneously one of the most frustrating - and one of the most rewarding – materials to work with. I attempt to coax it; all it wants to do is drip on the floor. Most of my work reflects a compromise between me and the glass; the finished piece is the moment in time when we agree.
Josh Simpson contemporary glass
copper face double circle wall clock
Girardini Design metal art collection at Gallery Five includes clocks, lamps, vases, fruit baskets, and more.
Julie and Ken Girardini are a husband and wife design team who have been working with metal for the past eighteen years. They have participated in some of the finest juried craft shows over those years.
They are self taught in all aspects of metal work, and explore daily with different finishing techniques, e.g., grinding, polishing, and patination of metals to achieve a light reflective and alluring surface. Ken welds using a TIG welder in addition to a plasma cutter to cut the steel. They have fabricated a number of cutting jigs to efficiently use this machine, and also utilize a variety of saws, sanders and grinders.
flying dragon wall clock
The Girardinis strongly feel that objects which people interact with daily need to be well designed and functional in addition to being beautiful.
Gallery Five is where you can find limited edition, handcrafted in the USA, unique gifts: ceramics, glass, fiber, metal and wood – and wearable art: clothes, accessories and jewelry.
Month of June – Dads and Grads SALE 15% OFF selected featured items at GalleryFive.com.