MAD About Jewelry 2022

Artist Highlights
The jewelry artists and designers featured in MAD About Jewelry 2022 include the following: a jewelry artist based in Seoul, South Korea, Eunseok Han makes jewelry out of recycled aluminum cans in lieu of precious stones and metals. Han notes that disposable products are one of the main contributors to environmental pollution, whose effects she explores in her work. Her current collection references the vibrant colors of coral, which undergoes bleaching and degradation as a result of rising water temperatures. Her commitment to preserving the environment extends to the use of other discarded materials, such as plastics.

New York–based jewelry designer Lorraine West makes strikingly elegant pieces that allow wearers to connect to their own beauty and power. A self-taught craftswoman, West pays homage to her Caribbean roots by mixing bold and minimalist design sensibilities. Inspired by symbology and geometric shapes, her hand-fabricated brass jewelry is meant to be a form of self-expression and liberation.

Based in Arizona, Matagi Sorensen is a metalsmith, jewelry designer, and fine artist from the Yavapai-Apache Nation. He creates hand-fabricated and lost-wax cast silver jewelry. His designs are sleek and modern and draw from traditional motifs rooted in his heritage. His jewelry incorporates mokume gane, an ancient Japanese metalworking technique that results in patterns resembling woodgrain. Sorensen is currently pursuing an MFA at Arizona State University, where he is furthering his knowledge and skills in metalsmithing and design, as well as experimenting with natural and culturally traditional materials.

A jewelry artist based in Canada, Rebecca Hannon investigates ideas of adornment in relation to the human form. In her “Contemporary Camouflage” series, she uses laminate, which she laser-cuts and interlocks to form three-dimensional pieces reminiscent of children’s toys. Through color, form, and intention, she interrogates how we conceal or reveal ourselves, as seen throughout the animal kingdom: coloration and mimicry in nature influenced early ideas about camouflaging in the theater of war. Her jewelry can fade into a striped blouse or jump out like a rosy wine stain. Worn on the body or displayed on the wall, these works are bold, impactful icons.

Michelle Currie is a Scottish jewelry designer and current artist-in-residence at the Glasgow School of Art. Inspired by science and astronomy, including research into black holes and gravitational waves, her practice explores the unseen forces that govern and shape our world. By combining silver and precious stones with ferromagnetic materials such as iron oxide, iron sand collected from the beaches on the west coast of Scotland, and ferrofluid, a substance engineered by NASA to control liquids in space, Currie captures the exciting variety of textures and movements created when iron particles are exposed to neodymium magnets. She creates her own mixtures of iron particles, which she sculpts directly onto magnetic field lines, using the invisible structure as a canvas to capture explosive moments as static, ominous wearable sculptures.


Opening Benefit
Join us Tuesday, April 26 for the benefit evening featuring first access for patrons to meet the artists and acquire their designs, a cocktail hour and reception, as well as a dinner honoring the 2022 MAD About Jewelry Award recipients, the iconic British fashion and textile designer Dame Zandra Rhodes and Art Jewelry Forum. Established in 1997 to promote critical attention to contemporary jewelry, AJF has become the leading voice for art jewelry’s advancement, serving to establish and elevate jewelry’s contributions to art.
- Cocktails and Shopping, 5 pm.
- Dinner and Award Ceremony at Robert restaurant, 7:30 pm.
To purchase tickets to the Opening Benefit, visit the website, or contact Rebekka Grossman at 212.299.7712 or rebekka.grossman@madmuseum.org.

Public exhibition and sale hours
Wed, April 27, 10 am to 6 pm
Thu, April 28, 10 am to 8 pm
Fri, April 29, 10 am to 6 pm
Sat, April 30, 10 am to 6 pm