Group Exhibitions

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Framed: The Art of Jewelry
Museum of Contemporary Craft
Portland, Oregon
January 19 – May 11, 2008

Curated by Ellen Lupton

Framed: The Art of Jewelry began as an Exhibition in Print curated by Ellen Lupton for Metalsmith magazine and was later brought to life by Namita Wiggers at the Museum of Contemporary Craft. The show explored the duality of the crafted object—made for the body but often removed from it through framing and display—and sought to interrogate that tension in the context of contemporary jewelry and adornment.

Ellen had originally seen our work Water at the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, and was fascinated by how our hand-sewn boxes contained and revealed the objects inside. That piece was selected for the printed exhibition, and later shown alongside several works from our Fire Tower series—three sculptural bags that had also previously been exhibited at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

The Portland exhibition also included work in a companion show upstairs, Touching Warms the Art, which asked artists to create interactive pieces that the public could touch. We contributed our Sandbag Necklaces—long, soft, tubular objects originally created for a fashion photo shoot. When worn, they had the feel of a stress-relieving object: tactile, grounding, and comforting. We loved them so much, we began to wear them regularly—and they eventually made their way into the museum’s permanent collection.

Framed was a rare opportunity to connect material, form, and experience across platforms—from magazine pages to gallery spaces. It was also a wonderful moment to see our work expand beyond sculpture and into craft, design, and wearables—still deeply personal, still handmade, but with a different kind of intimacy.