Daniel Brush: An Edifying Journey

EVENT DESCRIPTION

L’ÉCOLE Asia Pacific, School of Jewelry Arts presents its sixth exhibition “Daniel Brush, An Edifying Journey: Gold, Aluminum, Steel”, showcasing creations of the late American-born Contemporary artist Daniel Brush that are first shown to the public worldwide. “With the School’s mission to introduce diverse forms of jewelry arts to everyone, we are excited to be the first in Asia to hold an exhibition of Daniel Brush who had truly demonstrated one’s creativity, devotion in the making and passions of art, all to the fullest extent.” said Élise Gonnet-Pon, Managing Director of L’ÉCOLE Asia Pacific, School of Jewelry Arts.

To the world of jewelry, Daniel Brush’s creations are pure poems of light, consummate objects of contemplation. We may wonder about the wearability or the finality of some of his pieces, but this is only because we must see them as more than jewels, as the spiritual quintessence of the jewel. In the artist’s own words: “Jewelry is a vehicle to get closer to the gods, a conduit to allow dreams into our lives, into the maze of it all.” By the simple act of donning one of his rings, necklaces, or bracelets, the wearer adorns him or herself with the metal’s luminous spirit.

This path to the gods by way of the magic of stones and metals—the soul of the earth—and that of the jeweler’s hand began first and foremost as a journey of a poet in love. Daniel Brush encountered his muse at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon), and his search for a wedding band led him to jewelry. Inspiration beyond that of the sentimental variety also guided his work, such as his astounding discovery of a gold Etruscan bowl at the Victoria & Albert Museum when he was only thirteen. The granulation technique used in the piece set him on the trail of ancient savoir-faire. And although he may have been self-taught, that in no way prevented him from excelling at and pioneering in this area. Whatever the material or technique, his hand sought a level of perfection that would render it invisible.

Philosophical or alchemical in nature, his thought process around metals brought him to confront three of them: gold, aluminum, and steel. The exhibition is organized around his experimentations. While he discovered ancient goldworking techniques by his own means, his techniques for working aluminum and steel were experimental. Once considered precious, the metals had fallen out of favor in jewelry. Nothing could have pleased Daniel Brush more than to resurrect these forgotten metals and deploy them with technical asceticism, all the while continuing to explore and nourish his vision through a wide range of sources including medieval objects and armor, Japanese metalwork, and Napoleonic travel cases, among others.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Daniel Brush, revered American artist-goldsmith, painter, sculptor, philosopher, engineer and enigma was not so much a Renaissance man as a modern-day alchemist. Secluded in his Manhattan loft, with his wife, Olivia, also an artist, as his constant companion and collaborator, secreted in a labyrinth of the myriad antique turning lathes, and guilloche-engraving machines that he collected, Brush practiced the ancient, noble art of the goldsmith, fusing art and science, with poetry and philosophy.

Born in Cleveland Ohio in 1947, his mother an artist, his father a businessman, Brush won a scholarship to art school, the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, where he met Olivia; his first foray into jewelry was making Olivia’s wedding ring. After graduate school, he was a professor at Georgetown University, teaching art philosophy.

He had been painting for some years, when, in 1978, he and Olivia moved to New York City to focus on his work as an artist, and, he says he simply carried on from that point, every day just the same.

Throughout his work, Daniel Brush has transformed all our perceptions and dispelled our preconceptions of jewelry, challenging us to re-think our understanding of the jewel, its role, decorative, emotional or talismanic, its place in our lives today, its relationship to the body, to femininity, to fashion and fabrics.