Time Lines by Noam Elyashiv

I would like the work to call the viewer and wearer in for a closer look, Elyashiv states, to stay longer and understand the nuances in it, to be affected by it, and to love it.

Elyashiv’s jewelry evolves from her interest in the correlations and interactions between line, plane, and volume. Graphically, the pieces remind one of the drawings, which sometimes accompany them. As in a drawing, the work is assembled by fragments of ideas captured in lines, shapes, marks, and punctuations of color, with the concept living in the collective of the many elements that collaborate to define it. 

She typically begins her process with a grid, laying out the regulated linear pattern over the abstract shapes. For Elyashiv measuring and engraving allows her to be close to the surface, to connect, and understand the forms. It gives me time to enter the making, says Elyashiv, it keeps me present.

Elyashiv’s jewelry becomes, by channelling the spirit of prior iterations, nonetheless, without actual relationships to their histories. She resuscitates things that she made in the past by taking them apart, releasing the sheet from its current form, unfolding, unrolling, and flattening—usually opting to remain with the flattened shape, which she believes to be liberating, since, at this early stage, the new flat is without function or dimension, giving her the freedom to restart by responding to its shape, surface, and the air around it.

Although Time Lines includes necklaces and rings, Elyashiv has a particular commitment to brooches, viewing them as a challenge due to their functional demands. Consequently, she begins her making process considering the back of the brooch, since the attachment mechanism if handled thoughtfully, correlates with the surface, converses with it, so to speak, and thus communicates the manner of use. Elyashiv perceives no hierarchy between the two sides of a brooch, regarding the front and back as collaboration and exchange, manifesting the movement of folded forms and lines.
 
Originally from Israel, Noam Elyashiv received a BFA (1990) from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem and MFA in Jewelry and Metals (1994) from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI. Since 1994 she has been a Senior Critic in Jewelry and Metals there. She had a visiting artist residency at Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, County Mayo, Ireland, from 2001-2008; in 2017 she was granted a residency at Mass MoCA Studios, North Adams, MA. Elyashiv is the recipient of several awards, including two Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Fellowships in Crafts (2004 and 2019) and an America Israel Cultural Foundation Award. She has shown in many solo and group exhibitions internationally, including those in the Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Korea, England, Canada, Israel, New York, California, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Alaska. Her work is in the collections of the Schmuckmuseum, Pforzheim, Germany; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.