MAD Museum

When visiting the Museum of Art and Design, I was extremely inspired specifically by the Elegant Armor and Second Lives exhibits. Since we were not able to take photos, I made a few sketches of my favorite jewelry pieces. The first piece I was really drawn to was branch like sterling silver piece that was connected to an x-ray box. The x-ray was of a chest cage and heart, and the brand like sculpture was placed over the heart, mimicking the intricate vascular system. I found the usage of the x-ray and the entire composition to be very interesting and necessary for the piece to have a powerful presence compared to solely having an image of a chest in the background. This piece was designed by Julia Barello, a U.S. jewelry designer, in 1996 and the piece is entitled Vascular Studies. The second piece I really admired was a bracelet by Stefano Marcretti, an Italian jewelry designer, and was completed out of gold in 2002. This piece was inspired by geometry and minimalism, and is more so sculptural than functional. Marcretti's bracelet, and others that lined his case, were definitely inspired by architecture, engineering and industrial materials and there are no added ornamentation to any of the pieces, just very geometric and sculptural. Maria Phillips, another U.S. designer, created a neckpiece entitled Swell in 205 that is made from pig intestines, steel, thread, beads, and sterling silver. I was most inspired by her use of material, composition and scale of the "swelled shapes" making it aesthetically pleasing aside from knowing it was in fact pig intestines. I read that Phillips piece, and a few others were inspired mostly from nature and the usage of carved bones, fish vertebrae, animal teeth, claws stone beads, and healing herbs in ancient jewelry. They all played with our dependence on earth's resources, and chose to use natural elements like feathers, insects, grasshoppers, etc in their jewelry to depict nature abstractly. In the Second Lives "Remixing the Ordinary" show, I really was inspired by the use of everyday and even out dated materials to create new interesting works of sculpture. Stuart Haygarth's "Spectacle," was a particular favorite and was created in 2006 out of 1,000 old prescription glasses. He hung them from a acrylic platform and had collected each and everyone of the glasses he used within the sculpture. He stated that he was inspired by the celebration of mass production, an accumulation of goods that marked the Dadaism period and pop art. He took this idea and created a piece reminding us of how eye glasses have/had become as much as a focus on consumer identification as an aid to sight in contemporary society. Overall, the show was incredible, with other wonderful pieces using old vinyl records like Paul Villinski, and one creating a rubber glove gown like Susie Macmurray, and I've recommended to everyone who hadn't yet been.