Notice this is a #deadline post..!
The Society of North American Goldsmiths magazine, Metalsmith, has an annual juried ‘Exhibition in Print’. Appearing as Issue 4 of the 5 it publishes each year, the EIP alternates between being led by a guest curator (as in Issue 4 of Volume 35 last year, which was curated by Wendy Steiner) and juried by a small and influential team, who this year consists of Eva Eisler (designer and jeweler), Lauren Fensterstock (artist and curator) and native Seattleite, Lori Talcott (jeweler and educator).
The 2016 SNAG Juried Exhibition in Print the theme is “Shifting Sites.” (and the deadline has just been extended to Monday the 22nd of Feb!)
Now here’s a couple of insights into how at least I envisioned the Shifting Sites concept when we (the Metalsmith Advisory Committee of last May, Suzanne Pugh, Biba Schutz, Cindi Strauss, Angela Bubash, myself and of course our fearless editor Suzanne Ramljak) came up with the central theme for this issue. I have a page of notes from our conversation, but here’s just a couple of ideas that I hope might resonate with people looking to apply to this call out:
From my perspective, as an ex-interior architect, the term site is really loaded with notions of physical space – locations, landscapes and environments. So the works might address architecture and the environment in some way – be that in an external sense, like objects that invoke or reflect the built environment, or more in terms of the body – how the site of jewellery is permanently a shifting site, or even more internally, how the wearing of a jewel may change the context of the wearer, or even that of the actual jewel as it is re-positioned or re-contextualised, in some way when in its worn state.
Another way of looking at it that we wanted to address by choosing this theme, was that of sites of production. That the shifting could be part of the craft of the object, and movement invoked in its evolution could be felt or even be expressed its final form.
The word shifting is itself a moving target, when used in its sense of evolution, change, movement or transfer, it can itself mutate. A work that speaks to any of these shifts, be they so small as to be almost imperceptible, or the opposite, big and grand gestures of transformation, are all able to come together under this banner. In fact it even covers an object that has adopted a shifting as its ‘mission in potentia’, for example when the intention that guided its creation and adoption is to help to promote a shifting site/state within the owner/user/wearer/viewer, the prime example of this being an amulet or talisman.
The diversity of meanings we hope would enable many makers to find a way to align what they do with this theme, to allow our jurors a rich and diverse array of makers to work with in piecing together the final exhibition. I hope that you might think of gathering some images of your works together to show to our jury, and I wish you luck in finding your pieces exhibited in that eternally shifting site, the Metalsmith Magazine August edition.