Keystone - Holding Place

Materials: copper, silverplate, PPG acrylic urethane
Dimensions: 6" x 8.75" x 2.75"

Teapot

Photo credit: Billie Jean Theide

Billie Jean Theide
School of Art + Design at the University of Illinois
Champaign, Illinois. USA

These works are derived from a passion for collecting, an interest in hybridization and diverse relationships, and the human propensity for excess and ornamentation. The personal narrative of the objects is subsumed in the cultural associations of domestic objects, history, and advances in technology.

Billie Theide holds a MFA from Indiana University in Bloomington and a BFA from Drake University in Des Moines. She is the recipient of a Visual Arts Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and five Artists Fellowship Grants from the Illinois Arts Council. Her creative work has been included in over four hundred fifty invitational, competitive, group, and one-person exhibitions. Billie Theide’s work is in the permanent collections of the de Young Museum of the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco in California; Museum of Arts & Design in New York; the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC; Evansville Museum of Art in Indiana; Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, Czech Republic; National Museum in Wroc?aw, Poland; Porcelain Museum in Riga, Latvia; Civic Art Gallery in Panev?žys, Lithuania; Sonny and Gloria Kamm Collection in Los Angeles; and Sanford M. and Diane Besser Collection in Santa Fe. She is a Distinguished Member and Past -President of the Society of North American Goldsmiths. Billie Theide is Professor of Art in the School of Art + Design, the James Avery Endowed Chair in the College of Fine and Applied Arts, Chair of Studio Arts, and Chair of Crafts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


These containers and vessels definitely hold their place in the world of stunning art objects as well as in the world of metalsmithing.

Since the dawn of time humans have created containers to hold things that were important to them, from large vessels to hold food and harvests to intimate containers for small precious things. They might hold memories, ashes, medicine, beverage, fruit or food - but all spring from the imagination and skill of the maker. Some have specific religious functions, some are meant for everyday use. When one thinks of a vessel or container the inclination is to think of something with solid walls - yet many of these works involve the exploration of positive and negative space, and the use of negative space to help create the illusion of the wall of the vessel.

As the world’s largest jewelry related internet site, Ganoksin strives to develop exhibitions showcasing work from around the world. This exhibition was open to all metalsmiths, professional and amateur, advanced and beginner. Participants are from The Netherlands, the USA, Canada, Australia, Costa Rica, the United Kingdom, Israel, Hong Kong, Colombia, Romania, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia and Denmark. While most of the pieces are by an individual metalsmith, some are collaborations, one of three artists spanning 50 years.

In total 319 artists contributed 729 show pieces for the permanent online exhibition.

Objects in the exhibition include boxes, lockets, urns, ash containers, bowls, wine cups, reliquaries, match holders, vases, teapots, pitchers, sugar bowls, baskets, nests, pillboxes, clutches and a range of sculptural forms. A variety of techniques are showcased covering a wide range of metalsmithing techniques. Materials used include everything from gold and silver to less expensive metals. Ornamentation includes the addition of enamel, chasing and repousse’, gemstones and found objects.

The exhibition was curated by Beth Wicker, President of the North Carolina Society of Goldsmiths in the United States, and Adjunct Instructor at Northeastern Technical College in South Carolina. Director of the exhibition is Hanuman Aspler, founder of The Ganoksin Project, the world’s largest internet jewelry site.