Artist Statement
For Warren Feld, Jewelry Designer, (www.warrenfeldjewelry.com), beading and jewelry making have been wonderful adventures. These adventures have taken Warren from the basics of bead stringing and bead weaving, to wire working and silver smithing, and onward to more complex jewelry designs which build on the strengths of a full range of technical skills and experiences.
In 2000, Warren founded The Center for Beadwork & Jewelry Arts (CBJA) as the educational program for Be Dazzled Beads. The program approaches education from a Design Perspective.
There is a strong focus on skills development. There is a major emphasis on teaching how to make better choices when selecting beads, other parts and stringing materials, and how to bring these altogether into a beautiful, yet functional, piece of jewelry. There are requirements for sequencing classes – that is, taking classes in a developmental order.
Theory is tightly wedded to applications throughout the program, from beginner to advanced classes. Since jewelry, unlike painting and sculpture, must interrelate aesthetics, function and context, much attention is paid to how such relationships should influence the designer. Jewelry Design is seen as an authentic performance task. As such, the student explores ideas about artistic intent, shared understandings among all audiences, and developing evidence in design sufficient for determining whether a piece is finished and successful. The design educational program is envisioned as preparing the student towards gaining a disciplinary literacy in design -- one that begins with how to decode the expressive attributes associated with Design Elements to a fluency in the management of Principles of Composition, Construction and Manipulation, as well as the systems management of the design process itself.
Warren leads a group of instructors at Be Dazzled Beads (www.bedazzledbeads.com). He teaches many of the bead-weaving, bead-stringing, jewelry design and business-oriented courses. He works with people just getting started with beading and jewelry making, as well as those with more experience.
His pieces have appeared in beading and jewelry magazines and books. One piece is in the Swarovski museum in Innsbruck, Austria.
He is probably best known for creating the international The Ugly Necklace Contest, where good jewelry designers attempt to overcome our pre-wired brains’ fear response for resisting anything Ugly. He has also sponsored international Beaded Art Doll and Beaded Tapestry competitions.
My Personal Style
My personal style centers on a few key elements. I like to...
- Mix colors in unexpected ways, particularly colors you would not ordinarily assume would complement one another
- Use a lot of what are called "grays", such as black diamond, montana blue, colorado topaz, alexandrite, and other "simultaneity effects"
- Combine both bead weaving, bead stringing, and wire-working techniques within the same piece.
- Modify traditional weaving and stringing techniques
- Define and play with forms and themes, and thresholds, frames and transititions from one form to the next
- Have pieces that emphasize the sensual and sexual
- Create unusual, unexpected placement of shapes, such as using curved tubes where you might expect a straight tube instead, or using a cube where you would expect a flat rondelle
- Add dimensionality, curvature, and interlocking forms, where I can, to make my pieces both fashionable and contemporary
- Add a sense of movement and move-ability, wherever possible, and likewise, anticipate the aesthetic and functional impacts and effects which come from movement when worn
- Push the limits of, and experiment with, the materials and techniques I am using
- Organize my pieces into Series I call "Collections." For each Collection, I study a particular culture or technique or design theory, and play with what I've learned. How can I adopt what I've learned to my individual style and approach? Each Collection, then, is a personal challenge of expression and expressiveness.
