Group therapy

One of the problems designers face is the lack of a creative framework that is not geared toward customers or market forces. Making one's way into the business, whether as an independent operator or working for someone else, usually channels creative forces in one direction and does not allow for broader personal expression - or to use a term designers do not typically like, "artistic" expression.

Inyanim, a group of nine Israeli jewelers formed about a year ago, seeks to focus on this issue and offers a model that will enable its members to combine commercial design with artistic endeavor. The group, established by Prof. Deganit Stern Schocken, includes in addition to her, another eight jewelers. Four are graduates of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design's jewelry and metal design department: Michal Oren, Shirly Bar Amotz, Rory Hooper and Edda Vardimon Gudnason; four are graduates of the Shenkar School of Engineering and Design's department of jewelry design: Gregory Larin, Tehila Levi, Dana Seachuga and Aviv Kinel. The equal number of graduates from Israel's leading design and art schools is not coincidental, the purpose being to ensure the presence of different concepts and approaches, sometimes contradictory, to industry and art - in the field of design in general, and in the field of jewelry design in particular.

Stern Schocken describes the process of selecting the eight members of the group as similar to curating an exhibit. "I'm not objective and I didn't attempt to be formal," she says. "It's something that stemmed from a belief that people have unrealized potential. This is perhaps naive or idealistic, but that's the way I see it. The group is a lab and I am also learning in it. I may have experience, but no more than that. The moment you understand this, you are in a more creative place."

When Stern Schocken mentions her educational work, this is not by chance. For her, working with the group is a direct, and even necessary, continuation: she taught at Bezalel and at WIZO Haifa; she also set up the jewelry design department at Shenkar 11 years ago and headed it for nine years. "I finished my job as a department head and surveyed the scene. I thought it would be interesting to create a joint framework that is not based on competition between graduates," she says. "I see this group as a model for the long-term, that will perhaps grow, and that will encourage people to work and create."

"Metalwork and jewelry design is a language that enables individual expression just like any other discipline in art," she adds. "Forming this group says this is a legitimate discipline, with a need to express a political and social position, and is not necessarily a design-related one. It's another language for creating - something which is not automatically understood."

The group hopes to present exhibitions in various places around Israel and abroad. On Saturday, its first group exhibit - "No Problem (?)" - will open at the Gallery Loupe in New Jersey, which concentrates on contemporary jewelry design.

Michal Oren, who along with Stern Schocken made all the preparations for this exhibition, says from the moment Stern Schocken asked her to join the group she immediately voiced her enthusiasm given "the opportunity to present, to work together."

"We try to meet every two weeks, to show works and discuss them," Stern Schocken adds. "We give advice and listen, see how things are progressing. Sometimes there are longer periods of quiet and sometimes there are breakthroughs, just like everywhere else."

Doesn't the group dynamic resemble reviewing school projects?

Stern Schocken: "There is a considerable difference. When you go home, the connection remains, the commitment remains. In school, everyone stays in his own corner from exercise to exercise, does projects, comes and shows them. Here, it's a union of sorts, a commitment of some kind. It's different from paying tuition for school."

Oren: "Sometimes it resembles project reviews and it's even annoying. Really, what do we need this for? We're not in school anymore. But it's productive, to spread out nine objects by nine different people."

What is the difference between the commercial jewelry pieces and what will be shown at the exhibit?

Stern Schocken: "It mostly relates to the non-functional aspect, or the not-necessarily functional aspect, of the object. It touches on borders. Not having any function is one of the definitions of art for me. It's a very interesting place to be in - on the edge between something functional and something that has no purpose. It's a new thing, and it has tremendous power."

What do you call what you do? Metalwork? Design? Art?

Oren: "It is metalwork, and it means going back and asking again what metalwork is. The concept of art changed in the late 19th century and gradually became reflexive. The audience became accustomed to seeing art not as a window onto reality, but as a representation of it. Metalwork started this process much later, in the 1960s, when a piece of jewelry began to be a lot more than a decorative item. We do metalwork but ask the same questions that sculpture asks, such as space, time and gravity."