Dead Artists Might Have Made Jewelry

It would be awesome to be able to see, purchase, wear, and discuss jewelry made by some of the world’s great artists, who never actually made any jewelry.

Our point of view is that their particular artistic creativity might actually have translated quite well into pieces of wearable art.

For instance, wouldn’t it be interesting to see what kind of necklace Louise Nevelson might have created? Once described as, ‘one of the most important American sculptors of the mid-20th century,’ we imagine that with her large, chunky sculptures and monumental installations, it would seem that her jewelry might have appeared just as chunky and monolithic. She wasn’t intimidated by new ideas and creativity in sculpture, so our feeling is that she wouldn’t have held back in her jewelry design, either.

How about someone like, Georgia O’Keefe. How would jewelry that she might have designed actually translate into fashion? With her eye for color and texture, her artwork was fairly commercial in her lifetime. It’s quite likely that her jewelry might actually have become extremely commercial, also.

Again, what if someone like Lenore Tawney, using her weaving skills, and her eye for texture and substance, had been inspired to create fiber-based necklaces? A woman who achieved greatness in the weaving discipline, beginning her career at age fifty, and living to the age of 100, Tawney helped create the fiber art medium, as we know it today. We imagine those pieces would definitely have found homes in some of the museums of the world. And a lot of celebrities probably would be diehard fans of her jewelry, too.

Another icon of the art world, Eva Hesse, produced for so short a period of time, that who knows, maybe she may have actually been led to the field of jewelry had she had enough time. With a career spanning only ten years, we feel she had the most possibilities in pursuing a new field.

Who knows what these masters of their genre might have produced had they shifted their focus for awhile and tried their hand at a new field of endeavor.

We, Shelby and Carmela, would love to have seen their work. How about you?

Do you feel, as we do, that once one expresses creativity in one medium, that there is a strong possiblity that one may actually translate that creative spark to another?

Who would you like to have seen produce jewelry who did not actually make jewelry in their lifetime?