DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015):
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
SIRGPE_030514_01.JPG: Wendell Castle's "Ghost Clock" (1985). It looks like a grandfather clock covered by a shroud but it's actually a piece of wood. No shroud. No fabric. No clock. It's neat to contemplate.
SIRGPE_030514_43.JPG: Kim Schmahmann's "Bureau of Bureaucracy" (1993-99). During one visit, the guard showed me how the bureau worked. There are intricately-designed drawers and slide-out shelves all over it.
SIRGPE_030514_51.JPG: John Marshall's "Metamorphosis Revisited" (2001) is made from silver and acrylic.
SIRGPE_031030_002.JPG: Arline Fisch
Body Ornament, 1971
Sterling silver
Most jewelry pieces are designed for a particular part of the body -- neck, head, ears, hands, wrist, shoulder -- but a body ornament engages the full body. Fisch's work falls down the back and front of the wearer, impeding easy movement. The ribcage forms of the upper part of the ornament reiterate the internal bone structure of the wearer, creating a piece that suggests tribal associations.
SIRGPE_031030_027.JPG: Several of these pieces are done by Alexander Calder. All were done around 1940. As the sign says: "More famous for his monumental mobiles and stabiles, Alexander Calder also made jewelry and designed tapestries. These four bold pieces are really sculpture in the guide of jewelry. They have a definite tribal-like quality, especially the bracelet, which recalls pieces worn by sub-Saharan women."
The spiral thing (upper left) is a gilded brass hair comb.
The funnel thing (lower left) is a brass bracelet.
The interlocking circles (lower right) is a brass necklace.
SIRGPE_031030_064.JPG: John Paul Miller
Pendant/Brooch 1975
Miller's brooch falls within the tradition of costume jewelry pins fashioned after animals, birds, sea creatures, blossoms, and plants. Its gentle parody succeeds because of the rich enamel and exquisite granulation of the gold. It may be a sea creature or some floral form.
SIRGPE_031030_078.JPG: Frank Patania
Floral Spray Bracelet, about 1950
Burnham turquoise and sterling silver
SIRGPE_031030_087.JPG: Bob Winston
Silver Bracelet with Nest and Three Brass Eggs and Large Turquoise Stone, 1948
Silver, brass, and turquoise
The gnarled forms of this heavy bracelet look more like a rustic piece of sculpture than jewelry. The eggs and crude turquoise reinforce the work's deliberate naturalness.
SIRGPE_031030_104.JPG: Tina Fung Holder
Neckpiece 48.188, 1988
safety pins and glass beads on cotton thread
This neckpiece was forty-eighth in a series that Holder began in January 1988. Her use of elegant black safety pins and copper-headed beads to create this theatrical tribal-like neckpiece is ingenious and imaginative. The pins and beads are substitutes for jewels and are arranged in carefully composed patterns that bring to mind bone and fibers. This piece has the presence of a collar made specifically for a Hollywood film or a theater performance.
Jan Mandel
Susurra Transformation Tiara, 2001
18k gold
Mandel's "informal" tiara reinvigorates the time-honored tradition of this jewelry form by emphasizing precious metal instead of precious stones. Here, the emphasis is on form. Constructed from 18k gold wire, the tiara has eight parts that can be disassembled to create six brooches, one connector, and an armature. "Susarra", which means "whisper" in Spanish, evokes the ephemeral quality of the crown's linear openwork.
SIRGPE_031030_140.JPG: Shiang-shih Yeh
Untitled, 1996
anodized aluminum
With its formal composition, precise forms, and clean detail, this bracelet is a perfect example of the machine aesthetic. The object's presentation is deliberate and thoroughly confident.
SIRGPE_031030_157.JPG: Lori Talcott
Brisings' Stole, 2002
silver and brass
In the pantheon of the Norse gods, Freyje ruled life and death. Her principal attribute was the neck ring called the Brisingeman. Here, Talcott pays tribute to the seven medieval texts, including Beowolf, that mention the neck ring. She has photoetched texts from these sources so that the history of the neck ring is literally a part of the piece.
SIRGPE_031030_174.JPG: Marjorie Schick
Neckpiece, 1986
painted wood
Marjorie Schick is one of the most radical jewelry makers working today. She is known for her brightly painted wood sculptures that fit over the head, rendering the wearer a mannequin for decorative display. Schick's large jewelry brings to mind childhood play sticks and toys.
SIRGPE_031030_180.JPG: Robly A Glover
Fish Bait Necklace, 2002
silicone
This necklace is one of two that Glover made using mass-produced, silicone fish bait lures. Although colorful and translucent, their jelly-like softness has a repulsive quality. It is the opposing reactions of people to these lures -- the pleasure of seeing them versus the squeamishness of touching them -- that appealed to Glover.
SIRGPE_031030_215.JPG: Robert Willson
Big Bad Bird, 1995
glass
SIRGPE_031030_236.JPG: Albert Paley
Portal Gates, 1974
forged steel, brass, copper, and bronze
Albert Paley's "Portal Gates" were commissioned for the Renwick Gallery when it opened as a museum of American craft in 1972. A well-established signature of the Renwick, these gates represent a seminal movement not only in Paley's artistic career but also in the revival of handwrought metalsmithing in America.
In designing and fabricating his gates, Paley drew liberally, but loosely, from nature. Despite the symmetrical design, the gates comprise an orchestrated arrangement of artistic elements that is fluid and free, restrained yet not restricted. One cannot look at these gates without recalling the natural swirls and joints of stalks, stems, and tendrils. Rigid metals are worked in such a lyrical, rhythmical, easy manner that one forgets the effort that went into creating the gates.
SIRGPE_031030_272.JPG: Margaret Boozer
Eight Red Bowls, 2000
terra-cotta and pine
SIRGPE_031030_287.JPG: Peter Lenzo
Untitled Shard Face Jug, 2001
stoneware and porcelain
SIRGPE_031030_304.JPG: Howard Kottler
Waiting for Master, 1986
earthenware, paint, and simulated gold leaf
There was an audio clip with this piece that explained he had taken some cheap trinket he found in Japan and decided to turn it into artwork. The dog actually comes apart in some places and there's a hand near it's neck. You're supposed to wonder if the dog is the master or the human is the master.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015)) directly related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
2013_DC_SIRG_Perm: DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015) (27 photos from 2013)
2010_DC_SIRG_Perm: DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015) (45 photos from 2010)
2008_DC_SIRG_Perm: DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015) (28 photos from 2008)
2007_DC_SIRG_Perm: DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015) (7 photos from 2007)
2005_DC_SIRG_Perm: DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015) (28 photos from 2005)
2004_DC_SIRG_Perm: DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015) (50 photos from 2004)
2002_DC_SIRG_Perm: DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015) (22 photos from 2002)
1999_DC_SIRG_Perm: DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015) (20 photos from 1999)
1997_DC_SIRG_Perm: DC -- Renwick Gallery -- Permanent Galleries (Before 2015) (21 photos from 1997)
2003 photos: Equipment this year: I decided my Epson digital camera wasn't quite enough for what I wanted. Since I already had Compact Flash chips for it, I had to find another camera which used CF chips. That brought me to buy the Fujifilm S602 Zoom in March 2003. A great digital camera, I used it exclusively for an entire year.
Trips this year: Three-week trip this year out west, mostly in Utah.
Number of photos taken this year: 68,000.
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