How important is it that a piece of jewelry be wearable?

Or, no, scratch that (perhaps literally). Not just wearable, comfortable.

This week, some of the Art Jewelry staff — myself, Associate Editor Jill Erickson, Copy Editor Kristin Sutter, and Publisher Elfrieda Abbe — went on a "field trip" of sorts: a lecture at Cardinal Stritch University in north Milwaukee by esteemed jewelry artist Rachelle Thiewes. Thiewes had come to town as part of the University's temporary exhibition series, "Frippery: Peculiar Bijouterie or Curiously Adorned."

During the lecture, Thiewes showed us slides of her work and talked about her jewelry and metalsmithing career, exploring the changing influences that affected her work. Thiewes' work is bold, challenging, and, as she frequently reminded us, "will draw blood" if you don't remain ever-conscious of how you're wearing it. In many cases, the jewelry demands that the wearer conform to it, rather than the other way around. It reminded me strongly of a conversation that I had had with jewelry maker Jan Mandel in the first of our Artist Q&As (published in the November 2006 issue) — Mandel's work is informed by her vast knowledge of the social history of clothing, and functions as a critique of how the very fashions that society celebrates often hobble the women they seemingly seek to glamorize, restricting motion, vision, even breathing, in the name of beauty. All in all, it was a challenging and fascinating evening that raised serious questions about the form and function of jewelry, and we spent hours afterward talking about what we'd seen and heard. (We ended up closing down the restaurant!)