Meet the Jurors | We Meet in Between (Deadline Aug 1)
- Ingrid Valou
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Above, from left to right: work by Curtis Arima, collection by Estela Saez Vilanova, and curation by Charon Kransen Arts.
We Meet in Between is an international juried exhibition of contemporary jewellery and small objects, presented by the Vancouver Metal Arts Association and co-presented with the Craft Council of British Columbia (CCBC). It will run October 8–November 19, 2026 at the CCBC gallery on Granville Island.
The Vancouver Metal Arts Association is honoured by the participation of three esteemed artists, educators, and curators from the contemporary jewellery field: Curtis Arima, Estela Saez Vilanova and Charon Kransen.
Applications close August 1, 2026.
We Meet In Between's jurors are artists and educators attuned to transition, transformation, and tradition in contemporary jewellery
We Meet in Between challenges artists to work in states of transition, where belonging and displacement, tradition and transformation all sit alongside one another. Arima, Vilanova, and Kransen have each built their diverse practices across those same borders — between cultures and countries, between the sculptural and the wearable, between making and teaching, and between material and concept. As a panel, they bring a diversity of lenses to the assessment of their work.
Jurors review work that has been anonymised, and they will be reviewing submissions with attention to craft and quality of construction, creativity and innovation, and engagement with the theme, among other factors.
Curtis Arima
Curtis Hidemasa Nickerson Arima is a craft artist, educator, and academic leader whose work transforms inherited and found materials to explore sustainability, cultural heritage, and personal narrative. A Californian of Japanese descent (Yonsei) and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, he draws on multiple cultures and identities in his practice.
He is Professor and Interim Dean of Fine Arts at California College of the Arts, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Community for Ethical Jewelry, where he advocates for responsible practices in metalsmithing and jewellery.
Arima's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Metal Museum, Fuller Craft Museum, New York Jewelry Week, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, The Vennel Gallery in Scotland, and Ruthin Craft Centre in Wales. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Metal Museum and the Kamm Teapot Foundation. He has lectured and led workshops across the United States and abroad, including at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Indiana University, Musashino Art University in Tokyo, and Shenzhen Polytechnic in China.
He works with traditional techniques — hand fabrication, stone setting, raising, enamelling, and hand push engraving — in a slow-craft approach that treats found materials as precious. Recently his work has focused on preserving and reinterpreting his elders' and ancestors' experiences of WWII Japanese American internment, transforming gathered memories into abstracted jewellery.
He holds an individualized BFA in Ceramics and Jewelry/Metal Arts from California College of Arts and Crafts and an MFA in Metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Below: recent work by Curtis Arima.
Estela Saez Vilanova
Estela Saez Vilanova is a Catalan maker and educator whose work spans the last 25 years. Her pieces range from colourful fabric bladders suspended above or below black metal containers to fragile prosthetic scaffolds made of cardboard. Though occasionally wearable, her work draws its power less from the body than from its relationship to the space around it, while staying proportionate to the hand — the writer Benjamin Lignel has placed her among a small group of makers whose practice is guided by contemporary jewellery's dual nature, at once sculptural and wearable.
She was educated at Massana School in Barcelona, and from 2005 to 2007 was studio assistant to Professor Ruudt Peters in Amsterdam, a collaboration that continues today. She completed her Master of Arts at the University of Trier, Idar-Oberstein, in 2010, and remained based in the Netherlands until 2012, developing her own art projects. Her work has been exhibited internationally since 1996 and published in magazines, catalogues, and specialized books both within jewellery and beyond it.
In 2013 she moved to post-revolutionary Cairo for four years as director and co-founder of The Design Studio by Azza Fahmy, a project selected by the United Nations as an example of how jewellery and design can enable self-sufficiency and change women's lives and perspectives. She is an independent UNESCO Arts & Crafts expert, and has been a professor at Design Academy Eindhoven since 2021.
Her master's thesis, The Core & The Shell (2010), asks how the insider circles of jewellery might connect with society at large — a question she has kept working on through the seminars, events, and cross-disciplinary projects she organizes to promote critical thinking in the field.
She lives in Lladó, Catalonia, and works internationally.
Works from various stages of Estela Saez Villanova's career.
Charon Kransen
Charon Kransen has worked in the field of contemporary jewellery since 1969 and has resided in New York City since 1988. He received his training at the Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts in Jerusalem, the Fachhochschule fuer Gestaltung in Pforzheim, Germany, and at Juhls in Kautokeino, Norway.
He has served as Professor of Jewelry (and Enamel) Design at the University of Utrecht, Head of the Jewelry and Enamel department at the University Arts Amersfoort, and President of the VES, the Dutch Jewelry Designers Organization, and lectures at universities, colleges, and art organizations internationally.
As curator, art-dealer, and agent, Kransen represents over 150 international contemporary jewellers — mostly non-Americans — in North America, showing their work at galleries and art fairs including SOFA Chicago, SOFA New York, the International Art + Design Fair in New York, Art Palm Beach, the Miami International Art Fair, SOFA West in Santa Fe, and Art Basel Miami at Red Dot Miami. He also distributes books and catalogues in the field of jewellery, metal, and design, and his array of international titles is considered the most comprehensive in contemporary jewellery. He has been the official bookseller of SNAG, the Society of North American Goldsmiths, for the past thirty years.
Kransen has juried Talente and Schmuckszene in Munich for many years, as well as Joya in Spain, Gioielli in Fermento in Italy, Itami in Japan, Athens Jewelry Week in Greece, the Legnica Silver Festival in Poland, the Cheongju International Craft Biennial in Korea, Romania Jewelry Week, and Hungarian Jewelry Week, among others.
For the past 25 years he has lectured on contemporary jewellery and given master classes to art students and professional makers in the USA, Europe, Australia, Asia, and South America. His master class encourages artists and makers to work from their own unique talent rather than the more common route of commercial work dictated by mainstream demand and taste — work that involves looking at the psychological and emotional barriers we consciously or unconsciously put up within ourselves.
Charon Kransen Arts' seminars (left); gallery gathering (centre); and book display (right).
Apply by August 1
Submissions to We Meet in Between close August 1, 2026. The exhibition is open internationally to artists working in contemporary jewellery, wearable objects, and small sculptural metal objects. Full eligibility details, submission requirements, and important dates are in the call for entry.
Applicants don't need to be members to apply. Upon selection, however, artists will be expected to be VMAA members good standing during the exhibiton period.
Questions about submissions, eligibility, or accessibility accommodations? Email us at Exhibitions@VancouverMetalArts.com.