Sculpture to Wear

For decades, the American artist Marjorie Schick has been a pioneering exponent of avant-garde jewelry. Her dynamic objects, charged with energy, are rooted in the revolutionary late 1960s European concept of jewelry and her designs transgress the conventional boundaries of form, material and color. The artist regards the human body as a ‘living sculpture’ and constructs her works in a wide variety of materials to extend the body. Her jewelry is often on an excitingly grand scale: a brooch that stretches far across the wearer’s shoulder to occupy the surrounding space; a neckpiece so large that it creates its own physical environment; an object that is worn on the shoulders yet envelops the entire head. All are shown in beautiful color photographs. Marjorie Schick’s jewelry relates to 20th-century abstract art, especially Constructivism. Here, body sculpture is created that must be classified as abstract art. Peter Dormer wrote in Aspects magazine: “Schick, who trained first as a metalsmith, is now the most radical of the American jewelers…Her work has its roots in jewelry, but she has extended it as far as she can towards sculpture without actually becoming a sculpture.” Text in English and German.