The GIFTED Show 2021: Featured Artists

GIFTED is an annual market exhibition co-presented by the Vancouver Metal Arts Association and the Circle Craft artist collective.

This year, Gifted will be showing from November 24 through December 27 in Circle Craft Gallery at 1666 Johnston Street (Granville Island) Vancouver, BC. You may view and purchase the pieces below through the gallery until the exhibit's closure on December 27.

Artists and Works

Carmel Boerner (grace + decay)

Carmel is inspired by the Japanese aesthetic wabi-sabi and her one-of-a-kind pieces celebrate graceful aging, imperfection and the maker’s hand. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. A consummate artist in service of others, she has worked for nearly 30 years in various non-profits in Canada and the United States.

Mavis Chen

Mavis's interests lie in crafting usable and wearable arts. Her works explore the combination of different colors from metal, and she frequently creates visual hierarchies in each piece by using different colors/stages from metals. For this series, Mavis used windows as metaphors for seeing and experiencing the outside world. With the influence of the world pandemic, being in nature and travelling is not as easy as it once was; these pieces represent the little moments we are able to experience now as gifts.

Supanitch Melody Juthamongkol

A Thai-Taiwanese aspiring art jeweller based in Toronto, Canada, Melody's practice focuses on fabricating one-of-a-kind narrative art jewellery pieces. She draws inspiration from the natural world of floral, foliage, and fauna, depicting them on a miniaturized scale. Over H(ear) is a small batch production ear cuff design depicting a small rabbit leaping. When worn, it appears to be climbing over the helix.

Iris Lo

In her work, Iris uses jewellery as her medium to address cultural narratives, interpersonal relationships, and her own childhood memories. She sees jewellery as a communication tool to bridge personal experiences to others. Driven by the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes, she watched the threat of the pandemic sweep across Chinatowns already struggling with gentrification and the loss of local businesses and community spaces. Iris’ recent work is a love letter to Vancouver’s Chinatown and references practices of love and kinship in the Chinese-Canadian community.

Peggy Logan

Peggy is a celebrated teacher and goldsmith specializing in enamelling – the place where she finds the creative process to be at its most spontaneous, while similar to painting in the layering of coloured glasses and in building up a surface. This plate was formed out of one complete piece of copper: the sheet of metal was first roller-printed, to create depressed areas in the copper for enamel inlay, then formed by hand over various stakes. It was then cleaned and prepared for applications of vitreous enamel, kiln-fired layer by layer, with gold foils applied in the last firing.

Clarissa Long

Clarissa Long is a jewellery artist who lives and practices in Vancouver, British Columbia on Coast Salish Territory. Inspired by the coexistence of surrounding natural and human-made landscapes, she is drawn towards the layering of familiar materials with alternative and non-traditional ones. While primarily working with recycled materials to create one-of-a-kind works, Clarissa also creates a limited series of pieces that are minimalist in form, yet intricate in thought. Process work and development play a heavy role in her creative practise, and through her use of diverse techniques including enamelling, metalsmithing, painting, ceramics and working with offcuts or recycled materials in her work.

Kevin McAllister

A Vancouver-based metalsmith and jeweller with a 25-year career in theatre and exhibit design, Kevin makes modern jewellery inspired by industrial design from the first half of the 20th century. His work is immediately recognizable from their streamlined shapes, and the use of crisp, clean lines to create iconic forms with weight, contrast and duality of meaning.

Suzanne Nairne

Suzanne’s work has been described as elegant, minimal, architectural, organic depending on which series, all with a distinctive twist, is being discussed. She believes firmly in the necessity and power of authenticity in any art form, including jewellery for sale. The opportunity to create contemporary art jewellery is a huge motivation. By its very definition it demands that the work challenge conceptual, aesthetic, political norms of our time… and be relevant and forward-thinking.

Andrea Russell

Andrea is a Saltspring Island-based metal artist interested in art that lifts the heart, sparks the imagination, and stimulates the spirit. Curiosity is her primary motivating force, and inspiration is drawn from the awesome and entertaining forces of nature. She enjoys metal-working processes that leave room for the unpredictable. Andrea’s current work is a part of a continuing textural exploration of the patterns of light and wind as they travel across the surface of water.

Virginia Smith

BABU jewelry is the culmination of more than a decade of experience Virginia Smith has gained in the fine jewelry industry. The brand is a reaction against mass production and the industry-standard practice of overcasting, to remove 'imperfections' in pursuit of identical multiples. Babu jewelry finds beauty in the differences that naturally arise through wax carving and lost wax casting. We lean into the unique markings of each jewelry piece, viewing these characteristics as 'birthmarks', distinct features not to be corrected.

Monika Urbaniak

Monika finds harmony in tensions of varied textures, contrasting finishes and unexpected details. She often counterbalances precious metals with found objects or curious materials. When it comes to design, she is a minimalist with a twist. She balances her contemporary practice with narrative art jewelry pieces where her focus shifts to telling a compelling story. Her inspiration comes from all forms sculptural, natural and man-made; a line in the pavement, an inquisitive mind, a walk with her dog.

Ingrid Valou

A Vancouver-based multimedia artist, Ingrid scours the fluid intersections of numerous binaries – equity and injustice, the natural and artificial, folklore and reality, and balance and chaos – for meaning and inspiration for her various art practices. Her pieces range from fabricating and stone setting on minute scales to large, couture-style costume pieces. More recently, she has forayed into working with scrap and recycled gold, and salt and pepper diamonds on minute scales.

ZULA

ZULA is a multiple award-winning art jeweller and activator and one of the founding members of the Vancouver Metal Arts Association. As a jeweller and activator, each collection she creates represents an archetypal quality that’s designed to deepen the wearer's connection to the earth, the cosmos and their truest self. The shield collection explores the idea of protection: do we protect ourselves with love, or fear?

Special mention to Jakob Bauer, a goldsmith and member of Circle Craft, who rounds out the Gifted metal artist roster this season.

Jakob has two decades of experience as a German-trained goldsmith, and now creates one-of-a-kind hand-crafted pieces on the Canadian West Coast out of his studio in East Vancouver.