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Jewelers’Werk Galerie is pleased to present “Complementary,” an exhibition of new and recent work by artist-jeweler Sarah King. The show opens on Saturday, April 27, 2024 and will remain on view until May 18, 2024.
The title primarily refers to the pieces being made in series with their variations talking to one another, as well as their individual elements—light and dark, translucent and opaque, manmade and organic. In “Complementary,” King uses wood and bioresin—a thermoplastic made from plant-based materials instead of petroleum products—combined with silver to create sculptural pieces that play with scale and rhythm. She creates them by hand using mainly carving and casting methods, allowing for a spontaneous way of working, responding to the changing shapes and material possibilities throughout the process. King chooses materials for their versatility and ecological implications. The bioresin was developed in the 1990’s by a German chemist to improve casting resins by using sunflower seed oil, resulting in better optical clarity. She also uses bog oak from Suffolk, England—the only wood in the U.K. with this dark hue. The color and hardness is the result of trees being submerged in underground bogs for thousands of years and stained by the tannins in the water. King sometimes combines the bioresin and bog oak with white pigment, palladium, and gold leaf and alters some of the structural silver parts with gold vermeil or oxidation.
Sarah King is a British jeweler and university instructor based in Lewes, East Sussex, England. She studied fine art textiles at Goldsmiths College, University of London and launched her first silver collection in the 1990’s, selling through Barneys New York, and by 2000 pioneered the use of a new bioresin. She has won numerous awards and is in public collections in Germany, the U.S., and the U.K. In 2019 she published her first book, “Creating Wooden Jewelry.”
The exhibition is open during gallery hours: Monday through Saturday 11 am – 5 pm or by appointment. Jewelers’Werk Galerie is located at 3319 Cady’s Alley, NW in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC. It is the longest-running and only contemporary art jewelry gallery of its kind in the greater Washington DC area, where owner and industry veteran Ellen Reiben shows precious and non-precious works by international artist-jewelers. For more information, contact the gallery at 202-337-3319, or go to: http://www.jewelerswerk.com
