Melanie Bilenker

Last updated
Melanie Bilenker
Born1978 (age 4546)
New York City, US [1]
EducationCrafts and Jewelry, (BFA) University of the Arts, Philadelphia
Alma mater University of the Arts, Philadelphia
Website melaniebilenker.com

Melanie Bilenker (born 1978) is an American craft artist from New York City who lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [1] Her work is primarily in contemporary hair jewelry. [2] In 2010 she received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. [3] Bilenker uses her own hair to "draw" images of contemporary life and self-portraits. The use of hair is an attempt at showing the person, and the moments left or shed behind. [4] [5]

Contents

Collections

Exhibitions

Awards

Source: [18]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendell Castle</span> American artist (1932–2018)

Wendell Castle was an American sculptor and furniture maker and an important figure in late 20th century American craft. He has been referred to as the "father of the art furniture movement" and included in the "Big 4" of modern woodworking with Wharton Esherick, George Nakashima, and Sam Maloof.

Arline Fisch is an American artist and educator. She is known for her work as a metalsmith and jeweler, pioneering the use of textile processes from crochet, knitting, plaiting, and weaving in her work in metal. She developed groundbreaking techniques for incorporating metal wire and other materials into her jewelry.

Bruce Metcalf is an American artist who uses different materials including wood, metal, and plexiglass for his works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Lee Hu</span> American artist, goldsmith and educator

Mary Lee Hu is an American artist, goldsmith, and college level educator known for using textile techniques to create intricate woven wire jewelry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Dailey (glass artist)</span> American artist

Dan Owen Dailey is an American artist and educator, known for his sculpture. With the support of a team of artists and crafts people, he creates sculptures and functional objects in glass and metal. He has taught at many glass programs and is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he founded the glass program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonya Clark</span> American visual artist

Sonya Clark is an American artist of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Clark is a fiber artist known for using a variety of materials including human hair and combs to address race, culture, class, and history. Her beaded headdress assemblages and braided wig series of the late 1990s, which received critical acclaim, evoked African traditions of personal adornment and moved these common forms into the realm of personal and political expression. Although African art and her Caribbean background are important influences, Clark also builds on practices of assemblage and accumulation used by artists such as Betye Saar and David Hammons.

Linda MacNeil is an American abstract artist, sculptor, and jeweler. She works with glass and metal specializing in contemporary jewelry that combines metalwork with glass to create wearable sculpture. Her focus since 1975 has been sculptural objets d’art and jewelry, and she works in series. MacNeil’s jewelry is considered wearable sculpture and has been her main focus since 1996.

Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Gralnick</span> American contemporary metalsmith, studio jeweler and academic

Lisa Gralnick is an American contemporary metalsmith, studio jeweler and academic. She works in the field of craft and art jewelry. Gralnick says: "I have chosen to make jewelry, which is traditionally considered 'craft', and I do enjoy the processes and techniques that allow me to execute my work without technical faults. But 'craft' is only a means to an end for me, as it is for many artists. My desire to push the limits of jewelry and expand on them, to comment on its traditions and associations, is more the concern of any artist."

Kay Sekimachi is an American fiber artist and weaver, best known for her three-dimensional woven monofilament hangings as well as her intricate baskets and bowls.

Lola Brooks is an educator specializing in jewelry. Brooks' works have been shown at places such as the National Ornamental Metal Museum, The Society of Arts and Crafts, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, and Talente and are held in the permanent collection of The Museum of Art and Design, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lia Cook is an American fiber artist noted for her work combining weaving with photography, painting, and digital technology. She lives and works in Berkeley, California, and is known for her weavings which expanded the traditional boundaries of textile arts. She has been a professor at California College of the Arts since 1976.

Myra Mimlitsch-Gray is an American metalsmith, artist, critic, and educator living and working in Stone Ridge, New York. Mimlitsch-Gray's work has been shown nationally at such venues as the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Museum of the City of New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and Museum of Arts and Design. Her work has shown internationally at such venues as the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Stadtisches Museum Gottingen, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and is held in public and private collections in the U.S, Europe, and Asia.

Linda Threadgill is an American artist whose primary emphasis is metalsmithing. Her metal work is inspired by forms of nature and the interpretations she gleans from the intricate patterns it presents. She explores the foundation of nature to allude to nature and transform it into re-imagined, stylized plants forms.

Jennifer Trask is an American artist. She received a BFA in Metalsmithing from the Massachusetts College of Art, and an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Sondra Sherman is an American painter and jewelry maker. Sherman's work has been praised for its "deeply personal" expression of human emotion and of the subjects inspired by them. Sherman's skills and reputation as a jeweler have earned her many awards, including a Tiffany Foundation Emerging Artists Award, various fellowships, and a Fulbright Scholarship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marjorie Schick</span> American jewelery

Marjorie Schick was an innovative American jewelry artist and academic who taught art for 50 years. Approaching sculptural creations, her avant-garde pieces have been widely collected. Her works form part of the permanent collections of many of the world's leading art museums, including the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania; and the Victoria and Albert Museum of London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jan Yager</span> American artist (born 1951)

Jan Yager is an American artist who makes mixed media jewelry. She draws inspiration from both the natural world and the lived-in human environment of her neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, emphasizing that art is a reflection of both time and place. She has incorporated rocks, bullet casings, and crack cocaine vials into her works, and finds beauty in the resilience of urban plants that some would consider weeds.

Sharon Church was an American studio jeweler, metalsmith, and educator. She is a professor emerita of the University of the Arts (Philadelphia) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2012, Church was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council (ACC). In 2018, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of North American Goldsmiths.

Betty Scarpino is an American wood sculptor active in Indianapolis, Indiana. She received the Windgate International Turning Exchange Resident Fellowship two times - once in 1999 and another in 2016 - making her the second person in the residency's history to be chosen twice. In 2020, she was awarded an Honorary Lifetime Member from the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) for her contributions to the advancement of woodturning. Her work is currently in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection and The Center for Art in Wood Museum's collection.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Melanie Bilenker". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  2. "About". Melanie Bilenker. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  3. admin (2016-11-30). "Melanie Bilenker". The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  4. "About". Melanie Bilenker.
  5. "This Artist Crafts Victoriana Miniatures Out of Her Own Hair". Vogue. 2021-01-10. Retrieved 2022-03-22.
  6. Suzanne, Ramljak (2014-05-02). Unique by Design: Contemporary Jewelry in the Donna Schneier Collection. Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN   9781588395542.
  7. "melanie bilenker". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  8. "Garden brooch". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 2018-12-23. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  9. ""Pants" Brooch | The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston". www.mfah.org. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  10. "Philadelphia Museum of Art - Collections Object : Chocolate". www.philamuseum.org. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  11. "Celebrating female innovators at the Racine Art Museum". 10Best. 2017-09-18. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  12. ""Oatmeal" Brooch ("Morning Ritual" Series) | Yale University Art Gallery". artgallery.yale.edu. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  13. "40 under 40: Craft Futures". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  14. "Wear it or Not: Recent Jewelry Acquisitions". madmuseum.org. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  15. "Jewelry, from Pearls to Platinum to Plastic | Newark Museum | Artsy". www.artsy.net. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  16. "KMA: Katonah Museum of Art | Exhibition Archive". www.katonahmuseum.org. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  17. "Outrageous Ornament: Extreme Jewelry in the 21st Century". ArtfixDaily. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  18. "Awards & Collections". Melanie Bilenker.