The papers of enameler June Schwarcz measure 7.6 linear feet and date from 1932 to 2014. The collection comprises biographical material including an interview, correspondence, gallery files, professional files documenting Schwarcz's activities outside of her work with galleries including files for her exhibition June Schwarcz: Forty Years/Forty Pieces, project and travel notebooks, personal business records, and printed materials. Also found are photographic materials including photographs, slides, and digital photographs of Schwarcz, works of art, exhibitions, events, and friends including Merry Renk, Kay Sekimachi, and Dominic di Mare.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of enameler June Schwarcz measure 7.6 linear feet and date from 1932 to 2014. The collection comprises biographical material including an interview, correspondence, gallery files, professional files documenting Schwarcz's activities outside of her work with galleries including files for her exhibition June Schwarcz: Forty Years/Forty Pieces, project and travel notebooks, personal business records, and printed materials. Also found are photographic materials including photographs, slides, and digital photographs of Schwarcz, works of art, exhibitions, events, and friends.
Biographical materials include datebooks, resumes, a transcript of an interview with Nancy Sarvis and "Visit with June" digital recordings, a photograph album and handmade book commemorating Schwarcz's 90th birthday, and a book of poems written by Schwarcz as a teenager. Correspondence is with Carole Austin, Dominic and Margaret di Mare, Bob Ebendorf, Deborah Krupenia, Forrest Merrill, Hal Nelson and Bernard Jazzar, Sarah Perkins, Brigitte Peterhans, Kay Sekimachi, Kiff Slemmons, Ramona Solberg, Paul Soldner, and others. Gallery files consist of correspondence, exhibition forms and related material, and a digital recording of an interview with Schwarz and images of works of art. Professional files document Schwarcz's activities outside of her work with galleries including files for her exhibition June Schwarcz: Forty Years/Forty Pieces, memberships, notebooks for projects and travel, and supply and procedure files. Also found are personal business records consisting of financial and legal records including several ledgers and record books with pricing and inventory information; printed materials that include catalogs and announcements for Schwarcz's exhibitions, clippings, and other material related to the craft community; and photographic materials containing photographs, slides, and born-digital material of Schwarcz, works of art, exhibitions, and snapshots of events and friends including Merry Renk, Kay Sekimachi, and Dominic di Mare.
Throughout the collection, but particularly in correspondence and photographic materials, researchers may find notes that were handwritten onto items by Schwarcz describing events depicted and relationships to people who appear in the collection. Schwarcz also developed an inventory numbering system for her artworks. Inventory numbers are referenced throughout the collection. Information on which works of art correspond to each inventory number can be found in the ledgers and record books in Series 5.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as seven series.
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1932-2012 (0.5 linear feet; Box 1)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1956-2014 (2.0 linear feet; Boxes 1-3)
Series 3: Gallery Files, 1964-2012 (0.6 linear feet; Boxes 3-4)
Series 4: Professional Files, 1953-2013 (1.5 linear feet; Boxes 4-5)
Series 5: Personal Business Records, 1956-2013 (1.0 linear feet; Boxes 5-6)
Series 6: Printed Materials, 1956-2011 (1.0 linear feet; Boxes 6-7)
Series 7: Photographic Materials, circa 1935-2013 (1.0 linear feet; Boxes 7-9)
Biographical / Historical:
June Schwarcz (1918-2015), a long-time resident of Sausalito, California, was one of the preeminent contemporary enamelers in the United States.
Schwarcz was born in Denver, Colorado to Percy and Mary Morris. From 1939 to 1941, she studied industrial design at Pratt Institute. Soon after graduating she married Leroy Schwarcz, an engineer, and the couple moved to Baltimore, Maryland and had two children, Carl and Kim. The family lived in Brazil in the early 1950s before returning to Denver in 1954 for a brief period. While in Denver, Schwarcz learned about enameling through the books of Kenneth Bates. She acquired her first kiln and began creating enamels. Looking to nature for inspiration, she began enameling readymade copper vessels and soon began hammering her own bowls. Eventually she developed a signature method of drawing paper patterns and creating pieces from a lightweight, flexible copper foil that was amenable to folding and sewing like textiles. The work was then immersed into an electroforming bath for several days. The resulting enameled or oxidized vessels represented a unique development in enamel-on-metal technique, one that distinguished her among her fellow American craft artists.
Schwarcz died in 2015 in Sausalito, California.
Related Materials:
Also found in the Archives of American Art is an oral history interview of June Schwarcz conducted January 21, 2001 by Arline M. Fisch, for the Archives of American Art's Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, in Schwarcz's home and studio, Sausalito, California.
Provenance:
The June Schwarcz papers were donated in 2001 and 2013 by June Schwarcz.
Restrictions:
This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Researchers interested in accessing born-digital records in this collection must use access copies. Contact References Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
An interview of Kiff Slemmons conducted 2007 November 1-2, by Mija Riedel, for the Archives of American Art's Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, at Slemmons' home and studio in Chicago, Illinois.
Slemmons speaks of her childhood growing up in a small town in Iowa; helping her mother in the town pharmacy; working the printing press with her dad, who published the town newspaper; taking art lessons in grade school; learning to play the piano; attending one year at Scripps College before living for a year in Paris; attending the University of Iowa majoring in French; taking basic art classes her senior year; a spring trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, with her future husband Rod; financing the trip by selling 150 pairs of earrings at the student art fair; visiting Monte Alban and being inspired by the ancient jewelry in Tomb 7; moving to Washington state; meeting Ella Steffens and doing jewelry repair work; a strong feeling of the maker's presence in work she repairs; the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi; imperfection as an attractive quality; the conscious decision made from jewelry making to art making, based more in ideas and concepts as opposed to simple decoration; series Hands of Heros, Figures of Speech; the importance of exhibiting her work as it would be seen worn as opposed to in cases under glass; the development of her breastplate pieces; the Top 10 Ethnic Hits; the layering of many meanings as well as materials in her work; her respect for the brevity of poetry and love of Emily Dickinson's work; the restraint of poetry in leaving things unsaid and her struggle to capture that essence; series Re:Pair and Imperfection coming out of her move to Chicago and the developing Iraq War; her workbench as an ever-changing sketchbook full of chaos, tension, and conversation; working with Francisco Toledo and the city of Oaxaca in developing paper jewelry; her travels to India, Africa, Mexico, and Japan; her piece Insectopedia and the great interest shown in it by entomologists; and her desire to send her work out in the world where it is seen and enjoyed. Slemmons also recalls Ramona Solberg, David LaPlantz, Leo Adams, Esther Knobel, Lloyd Herman, Dominic DiMare, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Hoch, Annette Messager, Virginia Holshuh, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Kiff Slemmons (1944- ) is a metal artist from Chicago, Illinois. Interviewer Mija Riedel is a curator and writer from San Francisco, California.
General:
Originally recorded on 4 sound discs. Reformatted in 2010 as 13 digital wav files. Duration is 7 hr., 19 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Topic:
Metal-workers -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
Jewelry makers -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Kiff Slemmons, 2007 November 1-2. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Topic:
Metal-workers -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
Jewelry makers -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Interviews Search this
An interview of Ramona Solberg conducted 2001 March 23, by Vicki Halper, for the Archives of American Art's Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, in Solberg's apartment, Seattle, Washington.
Solberg speaks of her family background and childhood in Seattle; her jewelry studies with Ruth Pennington at the University of Washington in Seattle and her use of found objects; her service in the Unites States Army; attending the Edison Vocational School on the GI Bill and pursuing a masters degree in jewelry at the University of Washington; studies with Coralyn Pence; her travels to Mexico and her fascination with pre-Columbian objects; enameling in Norway; collecting beads from around the world; her book, "Inventive Jewelry-Making" (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1972); leading tours for a Seattle-based group, "Friends of the Crafts," to the Middle East, Asia, Antarctica, and elsewhere for 16 or 17 years; teaching at Central Washington State College and creating her first bead and found object pieces there in 1956; her fondness for turquoise, lapis, and coral; inviting Don Tompkins to teach at Central Washington State College; Tompkins's "tongue-in-cheek" use of metals; her desire to make jewelry that can "shake, rattle, and roll"; teaching and workshops; her use of preliminary sketches; her soldering technique; fasteners; the weight of her jewelry; the "restraints of jewelry"; her lack of interest in making matched sets and bracelets and rings; the lack of social commentary in her work; her series of pieces inspired by the book, "Watership Down;" the influence of Fred Woell and his use of "American throw-aways"; her involvement with the Northwest region of the American Craft Council; her association with a group of jewelers in the Northwest including Ron Ho, Laurie Hall, Nancy Worden, and Kiff Slemmons; making beaded fibulas; curating exhibitions such as Ubiquitous Bead (1987) and Ubiquitous Bead II (1998) at the Bellevue Art Museum in Seattle; exhibitions at Facèré Jewelry Art Gallery in Seattle and the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle; working in small spaces; getting into the exhibition Objects: USA "through the back door"; her status as an international artist; pricing her work; her pieces in museum collections; and her health. She recalls Russell Day, Jack Lenor Larsen, Sam and Frieda Maloof, John Marshall, Marvin Lipofsky, LaMar Harrington, Mary Lee Hu, and others.
Biographical / Historical:
Ramona Solberg (1921-2005) was a jeweler from Seattle, Washington. Vicki Halper is a curator at the Seattle Art Museum.
General:
Originally recorded on 3 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 5 digital wav files. Duration is 2 hr., 13 min.
Provenance:
This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America Search this
Type:
Sound recordings
Interviews
Citation:
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Ramona Solberg, 2001 March 23. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
