Presented by Benjamin Lingel and Namita Gupta Wiggers, co-sponsored by Art Jewelry Forum and Applied Craft + Design, a joint MFA degree program of OCAC and PNCA.

The ambition of this workshop is threefold: to give you an insight into the contemporary jewelry landscape; to give you the instruments to navigate it; and to show you that what you are already doing is part of the Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective discourse.

You make, show, and sell, and make decisions along the way that stake various claims about how you define your work. For example, last week you chose to shoot your latest work against a white background; we will ask you why. You decided, instead, to let it hang on the shoulders of a mature sitter; we will unpack with you the implications of that choice.

Together, we will discuss the idea that nothing is neutral, and no object is ever “on its own.” Through this workshop, we will help you build some tools with which to think through your practice and to occupy the different spaces through which your work can live—the page, the plinth, and the body.

This workshop is another way for us to test the user-friendliness and efficacy of the book as a tool for use. Do these ideas, theories, and methods work? How can we provide a clear bridge between critical writing and making and understand how work coming from different creative practices faces very similar challenges within the same field.

Workshop Info:
Saturday October 19, 9am – 5pm
The Lab at Museum of Contemporary Craft
724 NW Davis Street, Portland, OR

Workshop Fee: $200, includes lunch and a copy of the recently published text, Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective.
Register: occupythisworkshop.eventbrite.com

Additional details will are forthcoming and will be available by September 15.

Presenter Bios:

Benjamin Lignel first trained in philosophy and literature, then in art history, at New York University, and finally in furniture design, at London’s Royal College of Art. A lot of his time is devoted to creating jewelry, but the laws of gravity have recently been steering him back toward desktop adventures, including but not limited to curatorial, associative, and writing endeavors.

Lignel is a co-founder of la garantie, association pour le bijou, a French association with a mission to study and promote jewelry. He started contributing essays and op-eds to magazines and publications in 2006, and he became a member of “Think Tank, a European Initiative for the Applied Arts,” in 2009. He is the editor of Art Jewelry Forum since January 2013.

Namita Gupta Wiggers is director and chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art. Through curatorial practice, Wiggers considers how craft and design function as subjects and verbs, as simultaneously distinct and intersecting practices, and how the exhibition functions as a site and space for cultural inquiry. Wiggers is the co-founder of the Critical Craft Forum, and serves on the board of trustees of the American Craft Council.