Jewelry by St. EOM, Georgia Folk Artist and Visionary

St. EOM, Courtesy of Pasaquan Preservation Society

   The Georgia Museum of Art is pleased to announce the acquisition of three bracelets and four necklaces by Georgia artist St. EOM (1908–1986), some of which are pictured below.

                

Born to a Georgia sharecropping family, he left his home to spend time in an artist’s colony in New York City during the 1920s before coming back down to Georgia and transforming the farm in Marion County that he inherited from his mother into a colorful compound called Pasaquan. Claiming to receive messages and visions from people from the future, he refused to go by his birth name, Eddie Owens Martin, instead going by the moniker “St. EOM,” as he felt it more accurately depicted him as the prophet and visionary that he saw himself as. He created Pasaquan in order to show the intersection of the past, present and future as a seamless whole, combining the visual art from many different cultures, such as patterns from ancient Greece, architectural forms from East Asia and statues inspired by ancient Mayan art. Visitors to Pasaquan are frequently overwhelmed by vibrant color and seemingly endless variety on display throughout the compound.

Sadly, St. EOM died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1986, but his legacy is now preserved by the Pasaquan Preservation Foundation and by the Kohler Foundation, who are now restoring Pasaquan to its original glory.

St. EOM’s jewelry that the Georgia Museum of Art recently acquired also displays the same love for vibrant color and the use of motifs from many cultures.

                                      

For more information, see:

ST. EOM (1908-1986)/ New Georgia Encyclopedia

Eddie Owens Martin (St. EOM), Pasaquan, SPACES

MFA Candidate: Lily Smith

A jewelry/metals student, Lily Smith says, “I’ve always been really interested in work that goes on the body. . . . I’ve also worked a lot with fabrics in undergrad and grad school.”

She uses the term “jewelry” loosely as work that goes on the body and talks about the body. She combines the ideas of jewelry with those of garment and fashion, finding an interest in the colliding of fields. For her piece that will be in the Georgia Museum of Art, she combines hand-dyed silks and thinned-down silicon with added pigment painted on fabric to create the textures of fleshy forms. The result is a wearable piece that recalls the feel and form of different parts of the body.

She explains her interest is not only in work that goes on the body but also is about the body. The garments she creates mimic natural forms of the human form but are exaggerated. With a skin-tone color palette and materials that resemble skin as much as worn fabrics, she makes voluptuous plump forms that hang around the figure when the piece is worn.  

“This work talks about our standards of beauty and the ideal female figure. They're like dresses but rather than accentuating a thin figure they're fatty forms with multiple breasts and bellies, celebrating the fact that maybe that can be just as beautiful as a thin more fit person. Celebrating the curves and the fat and flesh in general,” she says.

Her creations take beauty to a richly authentic level with their yearning to be seen and felt. These garments continue to evolve with her interest in the process of making as well as the intrigue of the final state. They hold the viewer captive while evoking feelings about their own personal connection to the human form.

Smith’s work will be shown at the “Master of Fine Arts Degree Candidates Exhibition” at the Georgia Museum of Art from April 11 to May 3, 2015.

http://handgrownjewelry.weebly.com/lily-smith.html

The Look of Love

September is over; already the weather is starting to cool down and the leaves are turning from green into crisp gold and starting to fall. It is time to say goodbye to summer, but with the heat starting to abate (at least a little!), I’m sure many of us would be more than happy to see it go. The Georgia Museum of Art has its own way of welcoming autumn with a new and very special exhibition.

Along with what we currently have on display, The Look of Love: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection will open on Saturday, Oct. 6. The exhibition is the first of its kind in that it features solely lover’s eye jewelry, an expression of intimacy between lovers created and used primarily in the late 1700s and early 1800s in England. Secret lovers would have miniature portraits of each other’s eyes made into brooches, rings, pendants or bracelets, many of them depicting the eye and a wisp of hair, hinting at an identity but never revealing it. In most cases, the painted eye could only be recognized by intimately familiar couples, while others would merely see a fancy trinket. The trend of eye jewelry was started by the Prince of Wales at the time (later George IV), possibly to maintain a form of intimacy with his multiple mistresses. Eventually, these miniature marvels came to be used for family members as mementos or for mourning pieces, containing the eye of the dearly departed.

Pendant

The collection, put together by David and Nan Skier, contains more than 100 objects, making it the largest collection of lover’s eyes in the world. The Birmingham Museum of Art organized the exhibition and created an iPad app to present alongside the collection, providing additional information about and magnifications of each personal work of art. GMOA’s Henry D. Green Curator of Decorative Arts Dale Couch will serve as the in-house curator of the exhibition, which is sponsored by the W. Newton Morris Charitable foundation and the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art.

Throughout the month of October we’ll celebrate the arrival of the exhibition; the Collectors of the Georgia Museum of Art will organize an exclusive dinner and private tour of the exhibition as soon as it opens on Oct. 6. What’s more is that Nan Skier, the collector,  will lead the tour. Space is limited, so please call 706.542.GMOA (4662) to reserve a ticket! There will be another chance to receive a tour from both Skiers on Sunday, Oct. 7, during a Gallery Talk from 1 to 2 p.m. Additionally we’ll have a Family Day event on Saturday, Oct. 13, from 10 a.m. to noon, which will involve participants making their own spooky eye miniatures in time for Halloween. To cap it off there will be another Gallery Talk, “Cult of the Dead,” on Wednesday, Oct. 31, from 2 to 3 p.m. with Tricia Miller, our head registrar,  who will discuss trends in sentimentality and mourning such as lover’s eye jewelry, needle work, gravestone imagery and cemetery design.

If you would like to see priceless works of art or make some of your own, please feel free to come in at any time during our hours or plan to come to one of our events! We would be more than happy for you to stop by and enjoy the perks of October as much as we will!

Charles Pinckney - Stories in Jewelry

“My work in metal is a form of oral history, where memories from my life come alive in my designs.”

Featured in the current issue of Ornament magazine is Georgia native, Charles Pinckney. Designating Pinckney as just a jeweler would be putting it lightly. As a self-taught artist, he is known for his storytelling and for embedding in his jewelry the “non-tangible essence of emotional and personal human connections.” Each piece is unique and evokes stories from his southern childhood. His studio now resides in the old Clarke County Jail, which was built in 1876, and as Ashley Callahan (author of the article and former curator of decorative arts at GMOA) puts it, “Pinckney welcomes visitors to this retreat with an open heart and a ready hug.” His designs are remarkably personal, and commissioned work is known to bring tears to patrons’ eyes. This intimate connection to his work is what Pinckney is known for.

Pinckney has been awarded two grants from the Georgia Council for the Arts and a grant from Tula Foundation Gallery; he has also been showcased on HGTV as well as in Southern Living magazine. Last summer, artists had the rare opportunity to take a workshop from Pinckney in various studios up and down the East Coast.

When Gold Blossoms

Image from Michael C. Carlos Museum website

When Gold Blossoms: Indian Jewelry from the Susan L. Beningson Collection is on view at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta. The exhibition has more than 150 pieces from 2,000 years and “celebrates the dazzling beauty and awe-inspiring technical craftsmanship of Indian jewelry.”

Much of the jewelry in When Gold Blossoms is from South India, where gold is the preferred metal for jewelry making. The title also reflects the influence of nature on jewelry design. The exhibition includes rings, anklets, earrings, hair pendants and more. In addition to the jewelry itself, photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries will be displayed so that viewers can see how the pieces are worn and used.

In India, jewelry is worn not only for ornamental reasons, but also because of its symbolism. Both men and women wear jewelry from head to toe for its beauty and the belief that it offers protection and prosperity. Materials in the jewelry are also said to have certain powers, including purification (gold) or channeling energy (gems). There is much to learn about Indian jewelry and its meaning, so click here to read more.

The exhibition runs through July 11. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and from noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays. Click here for an article about the exhibition in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (prices also included at the end of the article).

Art Around Athens

Looking for some new accessories that show how arty you are? Phi Beata Heata, the student jewelry and metals organization at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, is having one of its semiannual sales starting today on the first floor of the Dodd on East Campus, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The sale will continue tomorrow, moving to the Miller Learning Center, so it's not your only chance, but if you want first dibs, you should get there early.