Note: All submitted events must be approved before they appear in the calendar.
Jewelers’Werk Galerie is pleased to present Reflected Bodies, an exhibition of new work by artist-jeweler Sharon Portelance. The show opens on Saturday, April 15th with a reception to meet the artist from 12 – 4 pm and will remain on view through May 3rd.
Reflected Bodies is a collection of necklaces and brooches referencing shared elements and patterns of nature and the human body. “Our veins are like the roots and arms of a tree and our hearts like her trunk. Our circulatory system, like the large rivers and tributaries that carry water throughout the planet, transports life-sustaining blood throughout our bodies,” Portelance muses. To create these works, she combines magnified imagery from the body’s interior landscape and those from the natural world, specifically photographs she takes during her hikes and paddles in Maine. Portelance prints the enlarged images on aluminum, and in some pieces, employs mirrors with etched images. The mirror supplies additional layers of reflection: of parts of the piece, the outside world, and an altered image of the viewers back to themselves. The intricately cut silver, also naturally reflective, provides both a shield and a filter for the images within. Explains the artist, “By pairing these two sources, the human body and nature, my hope is to provide the wearer an opportunity to pause and reflect on their own body and its relationship with the natural world.”
Sharon Portelance received her BFA in Jewelry and Silversmithing in 1982 from the Portland School of Art (now Maine College of Art & Design) and her MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1992. In 1999, she returned to Portland to teach at the Maine College of Art & Design where she continues to serve as Chair of the Metalsmithing and Jewelry Department. Portelance has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work is in the collections of The Tacoma Art Museum in Washington, New Mexico State University Museum in Las Cruces, The Samuel Dorskey Museum in New Paltz, and the Okresni Muzeum Ceskeho raje in Turnov, Czech Republic. Portelance is represented by Jewelers’Werk Galerie.
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
