North by Northwest. The Jewelry of Laurie Hall

Book / Arnoldsche Monograph

Published: 31.03.2022

North by Northwest. The Jewelry of Laurie Hall.

Susan Cummins
Damian Skinner

Edited by:: Arnoldsche Art Publishers

Edited at:: Stuttgart

Edited on:: 2022

Technical data:: 112 pages. 21 x 29 cm, 77 ills. Hardcover. English

ISBN / ISSN:: 978-3-89790-647-1

Price:: from 28 €

Order:: Arnoldsche Art Publishers
Order:: 20% Discount for Klimt02 members

Inner pages of the book

Laurie Hall occupies an exceptional position in the contemporary art jewelry of North America. She uses it to tell stories, great and small: of the places she lives, of the landscapes that capture her imagination, of her family, and the different perceptions of what it means to be an American. The publication North by Northwest offers a first review of her impressive oeuvre from 1974 to 2019.

Laurie Hall and her works are shaped by the place where she was born and raised: the stretch of land known as the Pacific Northwest, which has also given rise to a very unique pictorial idiom within the North American context. In her jewelry works she thus employs objects from her own personal history, making references to the American pioneering spirit and to the Indigenous populations of North America.

She began integrating found objects and producing miniatures as a result of the influence of Ramona Solberg, her professor at the University of Washington. She was also close to Ron Ho and Kiff Slemmons, to whom she has both a personal and a professional connection. What interests Laurie Hall is process, what arises out of the different materials and forms. Moreover, she incorporates humor and word play into her works, in a complex amalgamation of visual and verbal elements.

Alongside the main text, which primarily addresses Laurie Hall’s career, influences, and genesis of her work, the Galleries explain the individual jewelry pieces further: the many details that distinguish her works, their origins, and the puns which she uses to bestow her works an almost satirical touch—for it is her profound humor that most notably distinguishes her talent as a narrator.

In addition, numerous large-format images of the individual jewelry objects enable us to immerse ourselves visually into Laurie Hall’s unique universe of North American history.

About the author

Susan Cummins
is a former gallery owner, the founder of Art Jewelry Forum, and currently a collector and supporter of the contemporary jewelry field. In her most recent incarnation, she is a novice researcher and writer; together with Damian Skinner and Cindy Strauss she published In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture, which appeared in 2020 in our program.

Damian Skinner
is an art historian and curator based in New Zealand. He was the founding editor of the Art Jewelry Forum website and editor of Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective (2013) a multi-author survey of the contemporary jewelry field, and together with Cindi's Strauss and Susan Cummins In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture (2022).