My newest artist obsession is Anika Smulovitz, an Idaho-based jewelry designer, metalsmith and art professor. Smulovitz’s designs are brilliant both in their beauty and in their inspiration. Her academic study of jewelry’s historical context—the traditions that gave rise to it and how the jewelry, in turn, shaped those traditions—and it’s physical interaction with the wearer gives rise to focused, highly conceptual collections and pieces that are both striking and intellectually engaging. Smulovitz’s most recent collection is a series of specimen bottle-topped rings displaying plants, flowers and seeds from the artist’s garden.
Meant to explore our simultaneous dissociation from nature and our desire to control, preserve and connect with it, some stand as captured moments of beauty and potential, while others evoke a gloomy longing.
Her other collections include “Keys,” a study of the keys, especially as symbols of power, and the acts of locking and unlocking, “White Collar,” which explores the sexual (think Playboy bunny) and authoritative implications of dress shirt collars on women, and “Body in Motion,” which plays with different ways to convey movement.
"Loss and Longing I" and "Echinops/Globe Thistle" from Keys
"White Collar 4" and "White Collar 11"
"Study 3" from Body in Motion
Images via Anika Smulovitz
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