Restrung: Contemporary Beadsmiths · 2.16.23-3.23.23
Parachute Gallery · 1624 E 7th Ave #240, Tampa, FL 33605 · February 16 - March 23, 2023
Opening Reception · Thursday, February 16, 2023, 6-9pm
Closing Reception · Thursday, March 23, 2023, 6-9pm
Featuring work by:
Catherine Blackburn (Terrace, British Columbia)
Hilary Hertzler (Philadelphia, PA)
matt lambert (Stockholm, Sweden/Detroit, MI)
Curtis Talwst Santiago (Munich, Germany)
Teresa Sullivan (Olympia, WA)
Curated by Jessica Todd
In 2021, curator Jessica Todd published an article in Metalsmith magazine aimed at debunking the inferiority of beadwork in contemporary jewelry and art. Restrung: Contemporary Beadsmiths is a physical manifestation of Todd's research and a visually decadent installation of conceptual beadwork made by artists from a range of disciplines and backgrounds.
Beadwork has a reputation in the art world as being crafty, unsophisticated, and easy to replicate. This is not only inaccurate, but deeply rooted in colonialism, racism, classism, and sexism. Hierarchies of material and process are a reflection of an intentional rejection of the domestic, the ritualistic, and the arts of colonized people, to establish social dominance.
Beads predate the earliest known figurative art by about 75,000 years, and have likely been made and used by every global culture since then (Lois Sherr Dubin, The History of Beads). "I am drawn to the innate human impulse for the process, the malleability of the material, its painstaking production, and its relationship to individual and collective identity. Restrung: Contemporary Beadsmiths seeks to celebrate and elevate beadwork, a topic rarely visited by national arts institutions, and, as far as I know, never in Tampa." -Jessica Todd, curator
This exhibition is generously supported by the Gobioff Foundation Microgrant, awarded to curator Jessica Todd. Learn more
Read “Restrung: Contemporary North American Beadsmiths,” written by Jessica Todd and published in Metalsmith magazine in 2021.
Special Events
About the Artists
Catherine Blackburn · Terrace, British Columbia · Catherine Blackburn was born in Patuanak Saskatchewan, of Dene and European ancestry, and is a member of the English River First Nation. She is a multidisciplinary artist and jeweller, whose common themes address Canada's colonial past that are often prompted by personal narratives. Her work merges mixed media and fashion to create dialogue between historical art forms and new interpretations of them.
Through utilizing beadwork and other historical adornment techniques in her practice, she explores Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization, and representation. Her work has exhibited in notable national and international exhibitions and fashion runways including: Àbadakone: National Gallery of Canada; Santa Fe Haute Couture Fashion Show, New Mexico; and Radical Stitch: The Mackenzie Art Gallery. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including the Saskatchewan RBC Emerging Artist Award, the Melissa Levin Emerging Artist Award, publications in Vogue and In Style magazines, her inclusion on the 2019 Sobey Art Award longlist, the prestigious Eitlejorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, and most recently, a Forge Project Fellowship.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Unsettle explores themes of power and reclamation through the duality of Indigenous presence and erasure. Bound by the deep love that Indigenous adornment suggests, this wearable work shifts tactics of erasure into spiritual embodiment; celebrating the ways in which Indigenous bodies refuse to be minimized by the oppressiveness of colonialism.
Hilary Hertzler · Philadelphia, PA · Hilary Hertzler is a Philadelphia-based jeweler, designer, and artist. She moved to Philadelphia to attend college and fell in love with the approachable, vibrant, and under-the-radar arts and design scene of the city. After graduating from Drexel University, with a BS in Interior Design, she worked for over a decade in the interior design and architectural world. Her years designing for a small, collaborative, and generously encouraging architectural firm helped her to develop her eye for design and confidence in her craft.
Even as she draws more inspiration from her life in Philadelphia, Hertzler continues to look to the interplay of line, texture, light, and color in the natural world for her work. A childhood influenced by her dairy-farming, sculptor-father, and urban-dweller-at-heart, educator-mother fuels her interest in both urban and rural, manmade and natural. Her work in the mediums of metal, fiber, beadwork, and mixed media are influenced by the juxtaposition of these two worlds. A love of line, form, texture, and color encourages her curiosity and exploration of the moments where these elements intersect. This curiosity and exploration is reflected in her jewelry.
Always interested in the exploration of craft, Hertzler is, in many ways, a self-taught jeweler and artist. She enjoys playing with and working in different mediums, finding their limits and transformations.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work is a leap of faith into self expression fueled by intuition and a search for connection. My work asks you to find joy in color, in texture, in humble materials, in handwork. It is born of my history. A childhood steeped in the Pennsylvania Dutch traditions of my family—always working with the hands, with what is available. It is born of my love for both the urban and rural landscapes fueling me to create work that embodies the push and pull between these two instincts. Ultimately, I am looking for transformation—expanding past my learned boundaries to create something that feels both familiar and new.
matt lambert · Stockholm, Sweden/Detroit, MI · matt lambert is a non-binary, trans multidisciplinary collaborator and co-conspirator. Their practice is based in polydisciplinamory, entangling making, writing, curating, collaborating, and performing. lambert is currently a PhD candidate at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. Their research focuses on mapping collaborative movements with craft through a developed method of cruising. They have an MA in Critical Craft Theory from Warren Wilson College and an MFA in Metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Their work has been published, shown, and collected internationally.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Femme singers of the 90s, rethinking the living room to live and capturing the moments remembered spent in the fields of flowers. This thread of work contributes to a larger project of building a house to make a home.
Photo by Adarian Johnson
Curtis Talwst Santiago · Munich, Germany · Born and raised in Edmonton, Canada, Curtis Talwst Santiago explores issues of transculturalism, memory, and ancestry in the contemporary Diasporic experience. Santiago considers himself decentralized and is currently living and working in Munich, Germany.
Santiago has exhibited internationally at venues such as The New Museum, New York, NY; The Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Osage Gallery, Hong Kong; and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; among others. He was included in the inaugural 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art, the SITE Santa Fe SITELines.2018 Biennial, and the 2018 and 2022 Biennale de Dakar. In September 2021, he was an Artist in Residence at Kehinde Wiley's Black Rock Senegal, and in 2022, he was a visiting professor and artist-in-residence at the University of Tennessee. He is currently an active board member on the Board of Directors for the Drawing Center in New York.
ARTIST STATEMENT
In developing his body of work By Sea, Santiago was particularly drawn to the representations of an African Knight in everyday life in Renaissance Portugal. He was inspired by the whimsical tradition of 17th century Capriccio landscape paintings, where a mixture of real and imaginary features share the same fantastical space. “I thought about all the armor I needed while traveling the world as a person of color,” Santiago tells Observer, of the motivation behind this body of work.
Intertwining history with fiction, Santiago’s presentation tells the fictional story of an African knight—his alter ego—whom he calls Sir Dingolay. The character wears a colorful armor, though the artist keeps the reason vague—either because he has just returned home from a battle, or from the annual J’ouvert celebrations, a Caribbean carnival tradition that starts at dawn and is characterized by participants covering themselves with dirt, oil, or paint to symbolize the chaotic elements of humanity. Dingolay’s covering is a bright beaded armor Santiago created in collaboration with a street artist in South Africa named Jimmy. The work tells a story of drawing from ancestral knowledge, while also acknowledging the precariousness of dominant historical narratives.
Teresa Sullivan · Olympia, WA · Teresa Sullivan has been creating sculpture, jewelry, and tapestry since the early 1990s. Growing up in a large household allowed her to develop her artistic skills in eye-of-a-hurricane situations, beginning with drawing and collage. Informed by her devotion to music, irreverence of authority, and curiosity, she weaves living narratives with glass beads and found materials.
ARTIST STATEMENT
With glass beads and thread, I create statements and stories that weave past conventional narratives and unspoken assumptions. The most important aspect of this non-precious material is the hole, the missing part, the absence of matter itself; the beads simply wouldn't be beads without the piece of space running through them. As I fill these holes, I ask just how un-bubble-burstable our day-to-day reality can be.
In the Shop
A rotating roster of regional and national artists are represented in the gallery shop.
Fairy Tale Teas, Marissa Kinsler · Odessa, FL · Marissa Kinsler is the creator, founder, and lead Fairy Godmother of Fairy Tale Teas. Forever a lover of fairytale princesses, desserts, and romantic tea parties, Kinsler knew from a young age that she would live a life that celebrated all things abundantly beautiful—a life where she would not only enjoy magic, but share it with others. Kinsler and her team of fae {fairytale creatures} scour countryside's all over the world in search of the perfect fairytale to inspire each magical tea blend.
Babette Herschberger · St. Petersburg, FL · Babette Herschberger completed an AS in graphic design with honors at the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She then developed a studio practice as a painter and collage artist. In 2015, she was an artist in residence at ArtCenter South Florida/Oolite Arts in Miami. In 2021, her work was included in the Skyway exhibition at the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum. Her work was published in New American Paintings, edition #112, and is in the collection of Miami Dade College’s Museum of Art + Design, as well as a number of corporate and private collections. Herschberger began a study in ceramics at The Morean Center for Clay after relocating to St. Petersburg from Miami in 2018.
ARTIST STATEMENT
As long as I can remember I have appreciated and collected the work of ceramic artists. After having formally studied and practiced graphic design for a decade, I began building contemporary primitive furniture which morphed into a full-time painting practice of 25 years.
Upon relocating from Miami to St. Petersburg in 2018, I discovered an extensive environment of ceramic studios and artists in the region. Just weeks after my relocation I began taking classes at the Morean Center for Clay and like many, I was smitten with the process and have earnestly continued my pursuit of this medium. It is the most challenging yet rewarding medium I have ever undertaken. I have a great love of industrial design and have focused almost entirely on functional ceramic work, making primarily drinking vessels that have a focus on form and color, each new piece or series is in itself a design challenge. They are small sculptures to me.
Working in this utilitarian direction for the last four years has afforded me the ability to teach myself how to hand build with clay and left me with the headspace I need to continue my painting process. It is my aim to bring both my painting practice and my clay practice into a more cohesive body of work.
Cindy Liebel · Fredericksburg, VA · As an artist, Cindy Liebel has been a passionate visual storyteller for as long as she can remember. Her grandfather first inspired her love for photography, a craft she explored and honed during her formative years. The opportunity to learn and develop basic metalsmithing techniques in 2007, captivated her creativity and ultimately inspired her to rebrand and launch Cindy Liebel Jewelry in 2014. Since then, she has been refining her craft and continually seeking new ways to evoke emotion and delight customers through intentional design.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Cindy Liebel Jewelry is jewelry for the individual, the ever-curious collector who actively engages with the world and thrives on exploration. For every empowered individual, each piece is made to feel effortlessly comfortable, making style easy and timeless. You'll always find a diverse assortment of styles, crafted to outlast trends, gift giving, and for regular enjoyment, from leisure to your next noteworthy event.
My unwavering commitment to ethical and sustainable sourcing pushes the limits of my creativity and invites me to explore new opportunities in design. All jewelry is mindfully crafted with sustainability in mind. I intentionally source all materials from supply chains that focus on environmental stability and that educate consumers about sustainable mining and ethical trade. To that end, I use recycled sterling silver, gold and other precious metals acquired from trusted, responsible suppliers, or I will recycle the metal myself. Whenever possible, I reuse raw materials and incorporate post-consumer materials in the packaging.
I draw inspiration from features of Scandinavian design aesthetics, contemporary architecture and Art Deco, including geometric patterns and abstract line art. My designs start with a hand-drawn sketch and are transformed into scaled paper models, allowing me to see the form and shape of the design in a more tangible way.
Exhibiting artists Hilary Hertzler and Teresa Sullivan also have artwork in the shop!
