Susan Cummins on Judging the Susan Beech Mid-Career Grant
The $20,000 Susan Beech Mid-Profession Grant provides prestige, recognition, and funding to the winner.
- Recognizes a mid-occupation artist who has manufactured a significant contribution to the field of art jewellery
- Open to makers aged 35–55 on the January 8, 2023 deadline
- Proposal need to be about jewelry, loosely described
- Info right here
The distinguished jurors for this grant cycle are AJF founder and collector Susan Cummins (US) curator and historian LaMar Gayles (US) and jewellery historian, curator, and author Beatriz Chadour-Sampson (Uk). We will job interview them all, commencing with Cummins.
AJF: How had been you introduced to modern jewelry?
Susan Cummins: I was introduced to American craft in the 1970s and opened a tiny shop that primarily highlighted ceramics created by my partner, who was a potter. We did avenue fairs and sold wholesale. Finally a gallery space came up for lease in Mill Valley, in which we experienced our studio and store, so we acquired that. I then began displaying a variety of craft media, which includes jewelry. I was really impressed by the intelligence and qualities of the jewelers and started to be pretty intrigued in it.
This 12 months proceeds to see a ton of disruption and uncertainty—epidemics, war, political unrest, and financial stressors—but we are also seeing massive adjustments to the techniques people get the job done and interact. Do you expect to see different types of proposals given the variations we are encountering?
Susan Cummins: Sure, I hope to see new and unexpected ways of approaching jewelry. Even jewelry-adjacent function would be appealing to see.
What do you assume is the one most critical dialogue for artists to be obtaining nowadays?
Susan Cummins: How to endure.
Moreover grants this kind of as this one particular, what other strategies do you think that artists can be encouraged and supported?
Susan Cummins: They need to be educated in marketing and marketing and advertising qualities and understanding how to deal with manufacturing and distribution businesses. Understanding approaches to aid by themselves though even now creating exceptional perform is very tricky. Nevertheless there are numerous approaches to do that. The artists of the past never truly present road maps for this, so it would be element of their resourceful growth, far too. Ceramic and fiber artists have entered the style and design and artwork markets. I feel that jewelers will have to do that, far too. The craft marketplace of fairs and tiny galleries will not maintain them all around time.
