REBUS

by Marjan Unger

This book was born out of a necessity. In 2002 Iris Bodemer already made a fine, handcrafted catalog about her early work. More than a decade later the time has come to pause and look back again. REBUS is a second intermediate survey of Bodemer’s work, published on the occasion of Bodemer’s joint exhibition with Ute Eitzenhöfer. This exhibition will take place in 2013 and 2014 in the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, the Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus Hanau and the CODA Museum Apeldoorn.

It was obligatory to present this intermediate survey about the years 1997 to 2013 in book form. What Iris Bodemer loves about books is their haptic character – the possibility to present her jewelry items on a tangible carrier. In times like these in which much information is disseminated across the world virtually and through all sorts of erratic channels and in which so much is in motion – in social, cultural, scientific and economic respects – a material and fixed point of reference makes perfect sense, precisely within a field such as jewelry. Jewelry is made by human beings for human beings. People wear jewelry to disclose something about their personality or background. Like a book, a piece of jewelry is tangible as a physical object and relative in terms of its content. It is produced by one particular individual and is therefore also an outcome of the conditions from which it emerged. A fine piece of jewelry, like any good book, will have a lasting impact and in retrospect will reflect the time in which it was made.

Iris Bodemer thoroughly enjoys her craft: the human scale and the possibility to have materials, form and meaning converge in a single piece of jewelry. In her work she pursues maximal freedom and follows her own internal compass. Her desire as an artist is to show what touches her and what she perceives around her. The most recent body of work, dated 2013, makes reference to topical problems that trouble her.

Iris Bodemer mostly creates necklaces, brooches and rings. It is within the confines of these body-related forms of jewelry that her adventure takes place. As a visual artist she is always looking for materials, volumes, lines, colors and constructions to visualize her thoughts. While this process of transforming mental images into concrete objects evolves slowly one day, it may culminate in a liberating release in moments of supreme concentration, when she will create one piece of jewelry after the other. The relationship between the different bodies of work is marked by a certain degree of continuity. Each completed sequence of works carries the seed of yet a new series. Iris Bodemer therefore presents her jewelry in galleries and other exhibitions in such a way that the links and references within the specific bodies of work become evident.

Her creative work rests on the interaction between her thoughts, the mental images that form there, and the concrete objects that her hands subsequently mold. Serving as interconnecting factor, her eyes continually respond to what is evolving in her hands and they decide whether or not a work is going in the right direction. For every artist, creating is a mode of thinking, with the eye as arbiter.

Inherent to this process is the urge to constantly pursue new goals, so as not to get bogged down in repeating oneself. The images in this book clearly show that Iris Bodemer does not give in to the temptation rework successful pieces from previous bodies of work.

Anyone writing about jewelry has to be aware of at least two things: Firstly, language and images are two means for conveying experience and can both be precise and abstract so that, fortunately, they may complement each other though they are fundamentally different from each other. Secondly, anyone writing about jewelry has to deal with at least three persons: the maker, the wearer and the beholder. None of these three must be ignored.

Most books and publications about the work of renowned jewelers chiefly focus on the jewelry maker: Where they come from, where they learned their craft and who taught them, what drives them in their work, how they choose their materials and how they process them. Making jewelry is not a common profession; it involves debatable notions such as style and taste, and many of the techniques applied are shrouded in secrecy, in particular when fire is involved. This justifies all these various questions, surely, but often it is not easy for the makers to answer these questions. Iris Bodemer is one who chooses not to explain her work. What she has to offer she puts into her jewelry pieces, and this she presents to the beholder.

The wearer can make or break the effect of a piece of jewelry through their personality or way of dressing and moving. What weighs heavily is the occasion for wearing jewelry, the atmosphere, the light and question if the piece of jewelry is worn in company or for the wearer’s enjoyment without any intention to create an effect on others.

In the triangle of maker, wearer and beholder, then, the beholder occupies a kind of key position. The beholder may be a random passer-by whose eye is caught by a piece of jewelry or one who professionally writes and thinks about jewelry.

In this book the two roles are very clear: my text, which is that of a beholder, is followed by the wonderful images of Iris Bodemer’s work. However, as an author and art historian with a deep love for jewelry I tend to combine the positions of wearer and beholder because wearing contemporary jewelry is an excellent way to try out its effect.

I have followed Iris Bodemer’s work ever since the time she studied in Amsterdam at the Sandberg Institute, and have seen her jewelry again and again in galleries such as the Galerie Marzee in Nijmegen (Netherlands) and at fairs and other presentations. What fascinates me are the connecting elements in an oeuvre filled with surprises and promises. REBUS, the title of this book, stands for a picture puzzle – and it is my task to communicate this picture puzzle and the original individual aspect of Iris Bodemer's jewelry in words.

Freedom is the first word that comes to mind when looking at the work of Iris Bodemer. Rather than referring to that of her colleagues or major predecessors, she goes her own way. Her combinations of forms, lines and materials are odd, in the best sense of the word. She works with a wide array of materials, ranging from gold and gemstones to rubber and rope. There is no hierarchy in the place she attributes to materials and forms. This kind of freedom requires courage and the talent to know just when a piece of jewelry is right, and when fascination turns into a kind of alienation that no longer captivates.

The elements she combines in her jewelry vary strongly. In this respect, her jewelry may be compared to a still life, a classical genre of painting in which objects with divergent shapes, colors and textures are juxtaposed in a single composition.

Early on Iris Bodemer lost her hesitation to work with expensive materials and test them for their intrinsic qualities. For her work from 1997 she received a supply of gemstones from a trader, in good faith and with the only obligation to pay for those she would use in completed and sold items. When she also wanted to work with gold, much to her surprise she received a sizable loan from her bank, based on the argument that the gold could always be melted. That collection surely was a visual delight

Iris Bodemer makes jewelry like she would make a drawing, working intuitively and directly in the materials she gathered around her. Her work is guided by the notions that ghost about in her mind and that are based on things she sees, reads or takes in another way. Drawing provides a straightforward means to visualize such mental notions. Her work is gestural; if one is not likely to find symmetry in it, one will notice a sense of balance or a center.

In 1998, I witnessed Bodemer making large drawings, directly on the wall of a project studio at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. These drawings had little to do with classical pencil-on-paper drawings. If she did use paper, she used it as material, not as surface. Back then she drew with materials already, with shapes cut from paper and folded, but also with rubber, tape or band-aids. She added motion through large strokes in paint or crayon. The one material was harder than the other, and that ought to be seen. She alternated flexible materials and rigid shapes with each other. The experience she gained in those few weeks of utmost concentration have continued to be visible in her work to the present day.

Iris Bodemer has the visual power of a great artist and therefore has chosen exactly the right profession. She does not create autonomous works for display in an empty space, however. The pieces are made for the human body and come alive when worn.

On of the biggest challenges for a jewelry artist lies in the acceptance of the physical boundaries of jewelry. Which dimensions do you reveal in your work? How to appeal to the emotions, experiences and views of others?

To Iris Bodemer, dimension is as much an abstract phenomenon as it is a concrete one. She has studied all sorts of natural phenomena and concepts from science, mathematics and even astronomy. To realize tangible volumes in her work, she turns threads and flat materials into three-dimensional shapes. A piece of paper can be cut and folded into a shape. It can be creased, which gives it volume, and it can be wrinkled, pressed and deformed, so that it becomes a new material. The same can be done with sheet metal. A thread can be a mere line, linking separate parts of a jewelry item with each other. But it may also be wound in a way so that it becomes a volume. In Iris Bodemer’s thinking there is no room for a separation between two- and three-dimensional thinking; she feels at ease to be hovering somewhere in-between.

In spite of all the freedom in choosing and shaping the material, each resulting piece of jewelry does have an internal coherence. The artist’s sharp eye for composition makes sure that it is impossible for the beholder either to add an element to her jewelry or to remove one from it. In jewelry, unity is also a concrete requirement. For objects that have to defy people’s movements, it is a bad sign when they clatter owing to the design or when they have loose parts that fall to the floor when you touch them.

I particularly enjoy seeing how Iris Bodemer interconnects the different components of her jewelry – for instance, when I recognize the elements she applied in her wall drawings from 1998 with large, roughly cut paper shapes. This unity in her work is easy to notice in her use of tape, the simple fitting together of sheet metal, the sewing and tying things together. She is enough of a craftswoman to apply, where needed, the classical joinings used by a goldsmith. Her clasps and pin back solutions are perfect.

There is a personal experience underlying her tying together elements with rope or metal wire. She once received a ring from her family, which had belonged to her great-grandmother. It was her husband’s wedding ring, which after his death she wanted to wear herself, as was common for widows at the time. Yet the ring was far too big. As she did not want to ask a goldsmith to change it, she wound some brown and black wool around it, which made it possible for her to wear it. This also worked for Iris Bodemer. A tradition from her family, it became a favorite way of making her jewelry cohere. For a series of rings from 2004 she wound more and more yarn and knotted it, until they looked like classical rings with a set stone. Changing the size of the ring is achieved by simply adding more wool.

In the world of art, the word coherence has another meaning. It denotes the kind of coherence and unity of marks an artist’s oeuvre, a rhythm in recurring elements, ensuring tension rather than causing irritation. Such rhythm often emerges in the very practice of the freelance artist already. Iris Bodemer alternates periods of sustained concentration with periods devoted to activities such as teaching, preparing exhibitions, giving lectures and arranging other affairs. She experiences these interruptions of work as welcome opportunities to recharge, to gain new impressions and have ideas mature in one’s mind before embarking on a new body of work.

The work from 1999 and 2000 mainly consisted of large necklaces, which were presented as two-dimensional drawings. In the following years the work became more and more sculptural, however. If her jewelry from 2003 and 2004 keeps the balance between object and neckpiece, she also started using wool. The dynamic between two- and three-dimensional drawing was further developed in the subsequent body of work. The drawings formed an essential part of the jewelry. Gemstones began playing an ever larger role in the work from 2007 and 2008, a collection she even gave a title: Ingredients. The work’s internal consistency relies on metal wire and woolen yarn. In the following years metal would prevail while stones continue to be present in Iris Bodemer’s work. At this point, her work seemed to reach a turning point, which constituted one of the main reasons for making this book.

This chronology in the development of her work is adhered to in the selection of the works presented in this book.

The mutual cohesion in this uninterrupted series of jewelry consists of her approach, marked as it is by her direct drawing in and with the material; her sharp eye for composition and the right proportions, the apparent ease with which she connects separate components – and something which strikes me, as a beholder, time and again, namely her sense of color.

Color is physically measurable but, being a sensory experience, is also something relative. In daily life we never experience pure color; this is only possible with the help of intricate color meters. People mainly experience color in contrast to other colors and this has an inevitable distorting effect, for colors influence each other. Psychologists and linguists assume that there are eleven basic terms for color only: black, white, red, blue, yellow, green, brown, purple, orange, pink and gray. If we wish to define color in more detail, we do so by linking it to an object or by using an adverb like clear or soft.

A delicate kind of blue, integrated in challenging color combinations, is always enticing to me. Unfortunately, skilled colorists are scarce in jewelry; you will rather find them in fashion, textile design or painting and photography. This may be due to the color beauty of particular gemstones or a precious metal such as gold, which can be so dominant that one refrains from juxtaposing it with other colors and textures.

Just as there are people with perfect hearing, there are people with a perfect sense of color. From among hundreds of colors they will select exactly the shade they need. Most of them will also be capable of combining colors in pleasant ways. This ‘sense of color’ is an emotional gift that cannot be objectively approached.

Iris Bodemer has such a fine sense of color. Her palette has changed, however: While it has been marked by vividness and clarity during the past fifteen years, her most recent body of work shows more subdued colors.

This change results from a deliberate decision. It is characteristic of Iris Bodemer that she continuously engages in a clear-sighted analysis of her former work and of generally accepted notions about jewelry. This requires the courage and the intelligence to side with the not-yet-proven or to continue to interrogate one’s growing creative experience.

Maximal freedom in thinking and creating is only possible on the basis of posing questions and taking risks.

When Iris Bodemer starts to work in her studio, lots of things are going on around her: thoughts, memories, emotions, mental images, materials, tools, experience. Work means concentration, separating oneself from rules and expectations in the outside world, eliminating what cannot be used, holding on to what counts and, finally, perseverance in the effort to get to the core of what is essential. When asked about her process of working she concisely answers with a reference to musicians such as John Cage and Claude Debussy. The latter is said to have given the following reply when asked how he composed his music: 'I take all the tones there are, leave out the ones I don't want, and use all the others.'

The images that take shape in her mind are the product of a quick mind – of lots of reading, looking and persistently asking questions regarding the world around her. She is aware of the scope and the vulnerability of her own position within that world. She explores the flexibility of the boundaries of the universe and she wonders about nature and how people manipulate, neglect and idolize this notion. Much of her work is virtual. Dimensions are relative: what appears to be small can be large, depending on the distance one has to it. Iris Bodemer can look at Earth as if sitting in a space shuttle. Even an object’s shadow counts and may be decisive for the definitive shape of a piece of jewelry.

Her latest body of work is based on questions with respect to the environment, the exploitation of nature, the scarcity of particular raw materials and the interrelated shifting value patterns. Today, these are crucial concerns that have to do with respect. Iris Bodemer has moved away from the charm of the many kinds of stones and materials that she managed to apply so effectively and that also brought her much success. Nowadays she is strictly working with metals, such as large reliefs of silver, worked into a wild landscape divided into many separate brooches. She used costly platinum and fine gold but also ancient coins from India and natural copper. She integrated little tubes with rare earth in jewelry, thus giving an example of the value we should attribute to our globe as a whole and, at the same time, criticizing the thoughtless consumptive behavior that is running rampant more and more. It is a courageous collection; she breaks with a pattern of expectation regarding her work and raises issues which are urgent yet not necessarily popular.

Wearers and beholders will need to tap into their intuition and mental powers to situate this new work, especially when the colorful beauty of her previous collections appealed to them. In this last body of work Iris Bodemer searches for a reliable balance among today’s wavering value patterns. The outcomes are uncertain; she knows the scales may tip either way. Still, she takes a stand and has again taken the liberty to express in her jewelry what preoccupies her and to test complex insights and questions against the complexity of her mind. In doing so, she has all reason to trust her eyes: her work reveals a new beauty that commands respect.

Image and text are fixed now, which defines a printed book. All who pick it up and open it will see the same images and read this text. This book does not present all of Iris Bodemer’s jewelry; she has created many more items. Likewise, it is possible to find many more words to describe her work. This is also why the book’s title, REBUS, is reflective of all that its readers may still have to puzzle out while looking at her jewelry.

METALSMITH 2013 _ Band 33 Nummer 1 _ Page 30 – 37

Variations on Silence: The Jewelry of Iris Bodemer

BY MARJORIE SIMON

In her recent exhibition at Washington DC’s Jewelers’ Werk Galerie, German-born jeweler Iris Bodemer returned to metal in all its assertive materiality. As always, Bodemer’s asymmetrical compositions claimed their space on the wall, the table, or the body. Where she once brought in color from gemstones, found objects, and textiles such as wool and raffia, now her palette is mostly darkened silver leavened here and there with stark white, bronze, gray and the transpar¬ency of smoky topaz. In some of these pieces, gigantic pearls, rutilated quartz, and citrines balance the white of cast silver. In others, translucent pastel gemstones of pink and blue contrast with the milky opaque metal. Raw and dimensional, the many polished and cut stones dance a dialectic of the random and designed. The consistency of Bodemer’s forms and their relationship to each other makes the entire body of work cohere without seeming repetitious. The new neckpieces, clearly 21st- cen¬tury in their rough juxtaposition of seemingly dissimilar materials, such as faceted gemstones and rough copper, also reference classical jewelry forms, with a large central pendant and “chain.” A few pieces recall Bodemer’s earlier multimedia compositions. Eccentric circles and potato-shaped silhouettes appear to have been cut freehand out of metal in the manner of Matisse’s famed cutouts, as if one person were holding the paper and another manipulating the scissors. The resultant irregularity imparts a tenderness that lightens the physical weight and visual mass of these pieces. Capable of creating sophisticated clasps, trained goldsmith Bodemer favors simple ones instead, constructing giant staples to attach disparate elements. The reverse side often appears to be stitched, perhaps a throwback to Bodemer’s earlier textile assemblages. Bodemer’s work has always been gestural and intuitive, and this quality has not changed. She continues to use line effectively, animating even heavy wires to look as if they were drawn by a very young giant with an enormous pencil. “I always make my jewelry like I’m drawing,” she says. Likewise, Bodemer’s drawings engage us with their immediacy and combination of materials, textural variety, and repetition of forms. An intellectual polymath, Bodemer draws inspiration from multiple sources. While her jewelry aesthetic seems clearly European it doesn’t follow any single school of expres¬sion. She in fact is more engaged with fine art, particularly the drawings of Joseph Beuys, and artists as diverse as Leon¬ardo da Vinci, Marcel Duchamp, and Louise Bourgeois. Of prime significance to her are the work and words of American avant-garde artist and composer John Cage. Bodemer uses space vis-à-vis form the way Cage uses silence as an equivalent to music. As seen in her 2002 catalogue, simply titled Iris Bode¬mer, her jewelry is often spare, with elements inhabiting a kind of silent space. Among the lessons Bodemer learned from Cage is a principle that craft artists know well: the process is more important than the product. “The interpreter [read “student”] has to find his own way, trusting his intuition.” Bodemer says Cage taught her to “explore the power of mate¬rial, to carefully look at little things, and that inspiration is everywhere and first of all inside myself.”1
Die Formen, die Bodemer schafft, und ihr Wechselspiel untereinander sind so stimmig, dass ihr gesamtes Oeuvre ein kohärentes Ganzes ergibt, ohne repetitiv zu wirken. Der neue Halsschmuck gibt sich mit seinem schroffen Nebeneinander von vermeintlich unvereinbaren Werkstoffen wie facettierten Edelsteinen und Rohkupfer klar als Schöpfung des 21. Jahrhunderts zu erkennen und nimmt zugleich Bezug auf klassische Schmuckformen mit großem mittigem Anhänger und „Kette“. Manche Arbeiten erinnern an Bodemers multimediale Kompositionen aus früheren Jahren – Kreise mit verschobenem Mittelpunkt und kartoffelförmige Silhouetten, scheinbar freihändig aus dem Metall ausgeschnitten ähnlich wie die berühmten Papierschnitte von Matisse, die so wirken, als hätte eine Person das Papier gehalten und eine andere die Schere geführt. Diese unregelmäßigen Formen lassen eine Zartheit entstehen, die die Arbeiten physisch leichter macht und ihnen ihre visuelle Schwere nimmt.
Part of the power of Bodemer’s work comes from what she chooses to put together, and part from what she decides to hold back. But when probed about her work, she deflects questions about meaning and materials, saying she selects whatever expresses her ideas, without elaborating on what those ideas are. Such an attitude embodies the notion expressed by fellow German jewelry artist Iris Eichenberg, that “Europeans are not good at talking about their work…. [They believe] it speaks without explaining itself.”2 Asked about this statement, Bodemer agrees, laughing, that everything she wants to say is in the work. Cornelie Holzach, Director of the Schmuckmuseum in Pforzheim, expands on this notion: “What matters when creating structures, surfaces, colors, lines and volumes is not the technical suitability of the material but rather that the chosen material comes as close to the idea as possible.”3 Bodemer believes that talking about even completed work disturbs the artistic process, the “magic,” a sentiment shared by a wide range of artists, including compos¬ers and novelists. Besides, she says she can’t always explain the work’s meaning beyond stating it’s about everyday life, about the way the sun came in the window, about something she was thinking. Clearly, in her view, art and life are not binary; everything is art and everything is life. Images come from everywhere. She might be reading poetry or philosophy, or a Chekhov play, or even studying Zen gardens. Bodemer is also interested in cognition theories about how the brain works, and in physics, specifically the nature of potential, versus kinetic, energy. Speaking metaphorically, as she often does, she muses on potential¬ity, imagining that “all the lines are already in the pen…. maybe it is better to leave them [there] as a pure option? The challenge is how to translate this idea into the material world.” Bodemer refers to creative work as a filtering process “Every day we pour stories and pictures through a filter,” she says, paraphrasing Chekov. “What stays in the filter is what we have” to work with. Thought of in these terms, the jewelry seems a bit less mystifying to a viewer, more accessible, perhaps, and more rewarding. Despite a reluctance to explain her work, Bodemer speaks more freely about her creative process. She still circles around the subject, asking her audience to follow her train of thought. “It just has to express the idea, and the idea is visualized by the work; otherwise I would write books.”4 This statement accompanies ten pages of her multi-media work in a recent survey of contemporary jewelry. Made in the early 2000s, the jewelry contains some of the most vivid examples of Bodemer’s creation, in which she mixes gemstones, fabric, and textile techniques with primitive-looking metalwork. Asked about materials during her “textile period,” she again quotes Cage: “Someone once asked Debussy how he wrote music, and he replied, ‘I take all the tones there are, leave out the ones I don’t want and use all the others.’” Bodemer’s seemingly opaque responses to questions about her creative practice may simply reflect the considerable amount of time spent in bringing her work to fruition. After completing a body of work, and then exhibiting it, she takes off much of the following year to get her mind clear for the next project. For six to eight months she will empty her mind of expectation, and remain open to whatever wanders by, “concentrating on the inner dialogue between me and the world.” In that state of flow and receptivity, images and ideas come unbidden and somehow everything she has seen, heard, or experienced finds its way into the work. She admits to a very clear vision of what she’s making, planning out all possible variations before construction begins. The images are there; there’s no searching for them; they come to her. By the time Bodemer begins fabricating she doesn’t hesitate; everything springs to life in her hands. Still, each piece manages to appear completely spontaneous.
An oft-told story of a ring that came down to Bodemer through her great grand¬mother’s estate sheds light on such a creative process. Too large for the woman’s hand, the ring presumably had belonged to her late husband. Desiring to wear it, the widow had wrapped woolen thread around the ring to size it down. This simple and resourceful so¬lution, combined with the unlikely contrast of materials, inspired Bodemer to explore the use of wool, a material she had never really liked, in her own work. She came to appreciate it for the flexibility, strength, and warmth it provided. When the metaphorical qualities of wool ceased to interest her, she stopped using this material. Bodemer enjoyed a “happy childhood” in Paderborn, an ancient city in Westphalia, Germany, whose cathedral dates to the time of Charlemagne. She played in the river that ran through the town, and enjoyed the security of growing up in a small city. She also benefited from a supportive family and the rigor of an all-girls’ convent school, which she credits with building her confidence early on. From ages nine to fifteen she was further empowered through participation in co-ed scouting activities: As she learned to build fires, explore nature, gain knowledge of the woods, she began to discover her own solutions to real-life situations. She played piano and guitar, and by age thirteen she was already making and selling jewelry. Family friends, who owned a drugstore in town, allowed Bodemer to set up a jewelry table out front, and with her earnings she bought materials. Bodemer’s first teacher at Goldsmith School (Berufskolleg fuer Formgebung) in Pforzheim was Winfried Krueger, whose hands-off style had a deeply formative influence on the young student. Krueger taught that there is no “good” or “bad”; as an artist it is one’s own decisions that matter. Serious and ready to learn, Bodemer began to develop her aesthetic. Her final project, titled “Metamorphosis,” demonstrated the evolu¬tion of a simple silver square into nearly a dozen complex, volumetric rings. Although eventual explorations took her to diverse materials, such as felt and wool, Bodemer’s early work was in metal, specifically, sawing, bending, and fabricating from a flat sheet. Bodemer went on to attend the College of Design (Hoch¬schule fuer Gestaltung) in Pforzheim, a school that supports creative and technical skills equally, with no separation between design and production. Students are further taught to view art and life as a seamless continuum, with a curriculum that encourages exploration of broad-ranging themes. The school also facilitated a “constant exchange of ideas with the training centers in Hanau, Heiligendamm, Dusseldorf, Barcelona, and Prague,” as the school’s catalogue states.5 During Bodemer’s time there, a grant enabled her to travel to the United States and spend 1995 at Rhode Island School of Design.

At RISD, liberated from her usual tradition-bound environment, Bodemer found herself exploring not only new materials, but new ideas as well. Being by the sea, seeing American students picking up bits of colored plastic and using found objects in their work, she began to do likewise, combining metal with plastic, adhesive tape, and other non-traditional materials. In Providence, she found all kinds of colorful plastic cords, which she brought back to Germany and folded into her studio practice; enamel was no longer the only option for adding color to her work. Bodemer completed her degree and spent the following two years in Amsterdam at the Sandberg Institute, in the department of free design. Like many of the jewelry students in both Amsterdam and Pforzheim at the time, Bodemer con¬tinued to explore “alternative” materials, or at least materials that were outside the traditional choices for conventional jewelry. It is ironic that in the intervening decades this then radical departure has become conventional in and of itself, and by returning to metal, Bodemer has once again demon¬strated her independent streak. Bodemer’s early work showed itself to be confident and accessible metal objects. As well, Bodemer exploited the properties of metal—its ability to hold its shape, the ten¬sion inherent in a woven vessel, and use of line on a metal surface—to great effect. Early acceptance by Galerie Marzee in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, resulted in biennial exhibi¬tions that continue to the present time. The catalogue that Bodemer designed for her 2002 show there is a whisper of restraint, with unique hand-sewn covers and an index simply stapled inside. Photos of the objects, many made of gold, rough gems, and thread, are presented singly on each beautifully designed page. The work is revealed at its most gestural and refined. Animated line drawings recall those of German jeweler Manfred Bischoff, drawn from a perspective high above the page. Bodemer’s skilled goldsmithing is evident in the pillowy gold and silver elements, and her unerring sense of design marries them with slim threads or tiny strung beads. Work of this time shows characteristic Bodemer touches: raw crystals as well as cut gemstones, ingenious yet simple attachments, and subtle color combinations. A decade later, the work remains fresh.
To track Bodemer’s work through the past decade is to visit the major thematic concerns of contemporary jewelers for the years ahead. Her cut-out-with-scissors look has been adopted by students everywhere for its animated, seemingly spontane¬ous irregular lines. The energetic silhouettes convey the kinetic energy of their creation; not the caress of a paint¬brush, but the violent rending of paper by scissors.
A series of Marzee exhibitions reflect Bodemer’s concerns over time. In 2004, she explored jewelry as an independent sculptural entity separate from the body. The work is color¬ful, constructed from a variety of materials, including wool and plastic, and not necessarily wearable. In no way can it be considered supportive of, or secondary to, fashion. In 2006, brooches placed on wood-mounted drawings occupied an entire wall of the gallery. When not being worn, brooch and drawing comprise a unified composition. In 2008, Bodemer investigated the ways in which materials speak to, or fight with, each other. This work contained a mix of organic and inorganic materials with wrapped, sewn, and stapled textiles—from linen and hemp to Kevlar. While just hint¬ing at being over-determined, the material combinations remain discordant.
Eventually, Bodemer became bored with non-metal, and realized she had nothing more to say with that vocabulary. With her recent return to metal, she appears, without repeating herself, to be reinterpreting some of her earlier designs. For example, the silver neckpieces of 2012 resemble a horsehair brooch of 2008, with the chalky white metal replacing the knotted and bound horsehair. Both are in the same color family and contrast a frosty flotsam with pale rough tourmalines. Some of Bodemer’s jewelry is lovely and heartbreakingly tender, some ungainly with awkward juxtapositions. Bode¬mer echoes the best of her German and Dutch predecessors, partaking of Hermann Junger’s flawless craftsmanship and seeming nonchalance with precious materials, along with Dorothea Pruehl’s embrace of chunky, “ugly” combinations of the non-precious. She anticipated the current generation of makers, such as Deborah Rudolph in Germany, and count¬less students around the world, who are following her lead in pairing rough, torn-paper silhouettes with textiles and scumbled surfaces. Bodemer’s work demands thought but, more importantly, it invites thought. To understand it fully, read some poetry. Or write some. Listen to John Cage, who said there’s no such thing as absolute silence. Except the sounds of your heart beating and your blood rushing around your brain.

Marjorie Simon is a jeweler and writer residing in Philadelphia.

1. The connection to John Cage was noted by Judy Wagonfield in a review in Metalsmith, vol. 27, no. 5, p.58. 2. www.artjewelryforum.org/ionterviews 3. www.irisbodemer.de/E/text 4. Contemporary Jewelry Art, by Design-Ma-Ma, Cypi Press, 2011, UK. p. 30. 5. English translation of preface to Schmucktriebe, catalogue of Pforzheim school, ca. 2000, by Christianne Weber-Stoller, Society for Goldsmiths’ Art.

The first time I surrounded myself with a body of work by Iris, I felt I had found an artist who made just for me - working continents apart kindred spirit. I marvel at the artist who dares to keep pushing the perceived boundaries of any craft and knows when enough is enough. I value creativity where the artist takes materials and defies conformity by the blending and inclusion. I am satisfied at a cellular level whenever I see something I havn´t seen before. This is the work of Iris Bodemer. Sharon Campbell _ Seattle 2008 _ Collector and Wearer of Artistic Jewelry

KUNSTHANDWERK & DESIGN_4/2008_Page 24 - 29

Cornelie Holzach

Jewelry by Iris Bodemer

Writing about Iris Bodemer’s jewelry first requires figuring out what innovative jewelry actually is if this jewelry leaves no doubt about its claim to be art. The discussion about this issue and about the question of how to correlate jewelry and art has been going on for a long time now and has been conducted at various levels of intensity since the 1970s. Amazingly enough, nothing substantially new has really been added since. Even though jewelry creators have greatly enhanced their natural self-confidence in handling their profession, these questions ultimately remain unanswered, or they are answered in very individual ways by the different players involved. However, there is one thing that can be said for certain: Much more noticeably than in former times, jewelry creators also join in the theoretical discussions in order to define and substantiate their position within the context of art production. While the past was characterized by statements like the one that Hermann Juenger made in his days ("Goldsmithing is just another word for art"), now there are many texts and essays written both by artists and art historians that deal with the different aspects of jewelry as a form of artistic expression. Universities, colleges and other education and training providers are certainly an important forum that deal with jewelry as a form of art both in theory and practice and, in doing so, achieve long-term effects. This also applies to the museums that, apart from the specialized approach of the Pforzheim Jewelry Museum, have more and more come to attend to contemporary jewelry art. The most recent examples include the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, now housing Helen Drutt English's notable collection, or the Victoria and Albert Museum where a much stronger emphasis is placed on new jewelry after the reopening of the jewelry section. In addition, the work of jewelry galleries, art fairs, exhibitions, magazines is instrumental in helping to position jewelry in the public arena while providing the backing, support and reflective background that artists need to define their own position and, to some extent maybe, also to ascertain their own identity.

Iris Bodemer, born in 1970, very clearly and unequivocally decided to follow the path of art in jewelry all the way through her education at the "Berufskolleg für Formgebung" (Vocational College of Design) in Pforzheim, at the Pforzheim University, Faculty of Design, and then, for her postgraduate studies, at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. During her student years in the 1990s, the broad-ranging discussion about jewelry within the context of art and the fact that certainty on this issue was clearly expressed turned out to be beneficial for her. It seems particularly important for Iris Bodemer's position that there was no more need to discuss the basics and that the essential questions could be considered to be settled. This provides the freedom to take one's own unencumbered and uncompromising approach to finding out about the essence of jewelry. Iris Bodemer has never taken the easy path. Handling the maximum freedom of thought involves risks and uncertainties that are not easy to endure and to cope with. This also includes the possibility of failure and of needing to discard certain ideas, combined with the hope and assurance that a new beginning is always possible, based on the lessons learned from experience, and that this is exactly what may enable a new quality. In an early phase of her career, Bodemer worked on virtual jewelry or, in other words, on the idea of jewelry. How can you convey the idea of the ring, of this archetypical form of jewelry, as fully and as accurately as possible? Any form of materialization would show an individual ring but not the ring as such. The outcome of this undertaking is predictable: It will end up in nothingness. While Peter Skubic once conceived an exhibition of imaginated rings featuring only empty exhibit pedestals with signage attached, the thoughts of Iris Bodemer went even further: In the end, there is nothing left but the pen that you may use to draw a line around the finger. This was not a blind alley but rather a hairpin bend on a mountain pass. However, based on the quite frustrating experience of a conceptual idea of jewelry that, as the ultimate consequence, would have meant saying goodbye to jewelry altogether, she was successful in redefining her idea of jewelry and to find forms of realizing this idea that are acceptable to her. The rematerialization of the Iris Bodemers' jewelry is the way leading from the purely imaginary and invisible right into the tangible and visible world. Just like the low tide slowly reveals shells, finds and buildings otherwise concealed under the surface of the sea, her jewelry had a cautious and searching attitude when it began to re-emerge. These are works that, like drawings, result from a direct translation process into the material. Though designed to be three-dimensional, they are two-dimensional and drawing-like in a peculiar way. To continue the tides metaphor: we see the objects at the bottom of the sea shortly before the water retreats entirely. They are hardly recognizable as material objects, however, because of the light refraction. It is just the shadows and our knowledge about their actual shape that make them become three-dimensional objects in our imagination.

The captivating thing about drawings is the direct and uninterrupted translation of imagination and intuition. A drawing can be produced so quickly that it "overtakes" the thinking process and thus allows the unconscious to manifest itself. The inertia of the material that is always involved in jewelry making requires you again and again to think about how to make sure that the intuitive element will not get lost in the working process and how it can be visualized. Reacting to the existing discrepancy between the imagination, the idea of the piece of jewelry and the time factor affecting the realization process, Iris Bodemer arrived at solutions that reduce the technical aspects to a minimum and allow for the intuitive character of the drawing to be translated into the piece of jewelry. In addition, the technical simplicity of cutting, stapling and taping reveals something else: generally, any material can be used to translate an idea into a piece a jewelry, no matter if you choose gemstones and gold or rubber, adhesive tape, and staples. What matters when creating structures, surfaces, colors, lines and volumes is not the technical suitability of the material but rather that the chosen material comes as close to the idea as possible. This is made clear in a refreshing way by the pieces of jewelry that Bodemer made in this period: jewelry does not necessarily have to do with the craft of goldsmithing. This is an insight that should be assumed to be sufficiently known but must be emphasized again and again in order to realize the development that has taken place since the early beginnings of modern jewelry art that were pointed out above.
The drawing itself is an essential element in the work of Iris Bodemer, marking important milestones and turning points in the course of the development described above. The early works primarily derive their vigor from the drawing and live in the world of the drawing. Later on, it fades into the background insofar as it takes shapes in the piece of jewelry itself. Then the group of works created in 2006 introduces an interplay between the piece of jewelry and the drawing to merge them into one new entity. It disappears completely in the most recent works, one of the main features of these pieces being the materiality of the objects.

In the exhibition prepared for the Marzee Gallery in 2006, Bodemer presented 42 brooches with 80 drawings, arranged in a strict order of four rows with twenty 18 x 24 cm panels per row. One of the important aspects here was the sequential order and/or the way that the individual panels responded to each other, while all panels could as well stand for themselves. This conveyed the sensitive concept that Iris Bodemer follows in her work. As an attempt to integrate jewelry as a single object into larger works of art, the combination of drawing/image and piece of jewelry has always been a topic of interest in contemporary jewelry since the 1970s. While the beginnings were mostly characterized by wall-mounted objects or small-scale sculptures to be suspended like reliefs from which the piece of jewelry, when needed, could be taken out to be worn, the later phases saw the emergence of combinations with drawings. Some of them were placed underneath the piece of jewelry like draft drawings, whereas others provided explanations in a distinctive calligraphic style that were intended to through light upon the meaning of the work (or to cause confusion). At first sight, these principles - combining, supporting and framing the single objects by image carriers - seem to be the basis for the work of Iris Bodemer. A second look, however, makes you realize the tight symbiotic relationship between object and drawing and the importance of the stability that is provided by the drawing. Made by pen or other material, the drawing organizes a structure, sometimes appearing to be a translation aid, or yet again a complement or counterpart to the piece of jewelry. Shadowy as it is (there is rarely any color in the drawing, and if there is, it is rather reduced), the drawing manages to focus the attention onto the materiality of the pieces of jewelry and, at the same time, to make sure that it remains at the level of one component of the whole piece: the simultaneous focusing and extension make you wander back and forth between these two poles. It is this constant shimmering effect caused by the shift of perspectives that merges the individual panels with their pieces of jewelry to form one entity that is something new and can not be observed in any other of the combined works. If you really separate out individual pieces of jewelry from this entity and look at them separately you will realize that the opulent materiality is a very essential characteristic. While the foundation for this approach was laid as early as in the 1990s in Bodemer's early works, the diversity of materials – there are no limits as long as the material supports the idea – is reinforced by the high density of their interaction. The pieces of jewelry seem like highly concentrated essences, like iron filings on a magnet – and everything is eager to crowd together ever more tightly. Often it seems hardly possible to maintain the distance between the individual elements, as if some invisible force held them all together to never let them go. This kind of concentration is also visualized by the fact that the elements are joined and fixed together by being tied up: volume is created by tightly tying up the components, while it is not clear if something was wrapped or if the bundle stands for itself. The different solid materials such as gemstones or pieces of wood are massed together using twine or cord so tightly that the idea of undoing the bundle seems totally unthinkable. All are meant to stay together for ever and ever.

By grouping the most recent works together under the title "Ingredienzen" (Ingredients), Iris Bodemer pursues a topic that has been adumbrated in earlier groups of works time and again and now is becoming the central theme: the interplay between the different types of material, the combination of the ingredients which may subsequently merge and form a conglomerate, an entity. It requires a great deal of experience in handling and experimenting with the most diverse materials to capture and deploy the subtle nuances, the balance and the deliberate imbalance in the effects created by each type of material. There are stronger and weaker materials some of which immediately release emotions and some of which come to be perceived as smooth and harmless. Some of them seem to be infinitely heavy while others evoke pure lightness. Gold foil can either appear noble and precious or, if used differently, resemble crumpled up aluminum foil while a household foil may as well convey a spirit of equanimity that is not affected by time and change. In Iris Bodemer's works, pearls, gold, gemstones, wood, branches of corals, finds, pieces of fur and many other ingredients show their peculiarities and particularities. They are identical with themselves and, at the same time, they are part of the overall design and of the structure developed by the artist. This creates a tension similar to the dense and concentrated effect evoked by the combination of drawing and jewelry. It is the whole set of ingredients that provides the added value, without any one of them getting lost. Each element can be distinctly identified but it is only in their togetherness that they are more than each of them alone.
In her recent works, Iris Bodemer has departed more and more from the abstract and emblematic level of her earlier explorations into what jewelry actually is. And in doing so, she has even turned to the canon of the classical forms of jewelry in some of the works: necklaces with center pendants or with condensed forms conically tapered towards the center. Here, she clearly borrows from the traditional forms of gold work - but note how different the solutions are! What is noticeable is an air of delightful opulence and also the focused attention in all of her works. It is the confident use of carefully calculated transgressions amidst this very opulence – always seeming either slightly too much or a bit too little – that accounts for the high quality of her works. These works have their very specific charisma because Iris Bodemer delves into the material with an extraordinarily clear-eyed view. And, looking back, her body of work appears to be becoming more and more focused, like a determined and persistent path towards the levels of meaning in jewelry.

Iris Bodemer. Her jewelry pieces are like contemporary musical compositions. Different notes put together in unexpected combinations. Bodemer uses materials in a very democratic way. Wool, gold, rocks all hold equal importance over the history of her work. When worn the pieces are graphic, bold audacious. funny. They are modern relics of their time.

Ellen Reiben _ Washington D.C. 2008 _ Gallerist

A mes yeux, la grande force du travail de Iris Bodemer est le fait qu’il offre une multitude de facettes. Travail d’expérimentations, où les techniques d’assemblages et les matériaux les plus insolites nous paraissent, grâce à son inventivité et à sa sensibilité, d’une évidence absolue.
Extension de la fonction bijou ; il n’est plus là uniquement pour orner le corps mais la présentation, l’environnement qui l’accompagne lui donne un statut d’objet d’art à part entière.
Cette diversité d’approche confère à son travail une richesse qui renouvelle, au fil du temps, le regard que l’on porte sur ses créations.

Fabrice Schaefer _ Genève 2008 _ Galeriste

In my view, the great strength of Iris Bodemer’s work is its multitude of different facets. This is experimental work where various assembling techniques and the most unusual materials seem crystal clear to us thanks to her inventiveness and sensitivity. She extends the jewel’s function beyond the simple ornamentation of the body; its presentation and surrounding environment enhance it as an artefact in its own right. Her multi-faceted approach enriches her work so that the more we see her creations, the more we discover.

Fabrice Schaefer _ Geneva 2008 _ Gallerist

METALSMITH 2007 _ Band 27 Nummer 5 _ „Reviews“ _ Seite 58

„Iris Bodemer und Maria Phillips: Sculpture becomes Jewelry“

„Spiral“ in der Grover Thurston Gallery, Seattle, Washington 2. November – 2. Dezember 2006

by Judy Wagonfeld

Flip the title "Sculpture becomes Jewelry" to "Jewelry becomes sculpture." Now you have a glimpse into the chicken-and-egg dichotomy of this exhibition, curated by Sharon Campbell. But that merely scratches the surface. The exhibit's innovation stretches well beyond re-categorizing objects, to fuse concepts of sculpture and jewelry into a third entity of "functional installation." Individual pieces surrender their identity to the assemblage; nevertheless, each brooch and necklace, when discovered, plucked, and worn, holds its own.

Artist Iris Bodemer (Pforzheim, Germany) and Maria Phillips (Seattle), seem nurtured by the pioneering and intellectual spirit of the late sculptor Eva Hesse. Perched on the cusp of virgin territory, they strive towards cohesive mosaics embedded with adornements for the human body. Making a single piece of jewelry is a cakewalk next this obstacle-ridden path, but both pull it off with panache.

Bodemer's work evolves from Minimalism, imposing strict conceptual restraints on its production. In this installation Bodemer "draws" with liquid or solid material on sixty-four 12-by-18-inch white boards.

Half incorporate stunning brooches fashioned from clustered semiprecious stones, found objects, leather, and coiled strands of pearls bound by raffia or wool. An inherent rawness, drawn from the memory of her grandfather's ring wrapped in yarn and worn of her grandmother, dominates. Sparkling stones offset bleached driftwood. A brooch with smoky quartz juxtaposes nature and industry through metal framework and wool. Merged in a grid along the gallery's second-story catwalk, Bodemer's pieces evoke diverse response. From the lower gallery floor, the installation looks like a quilt or abstract art series. The sporadic placement of brooches on the boards lends itself to a musical store, imagery inspired by the music of John Cage. Reflective and spontaneous, the work hides and reveals relationship that, as with issues in life, must be contemplated and adressed.
…

As still lives in 3-D, the installations bulge with ornamentation. Whether chaotic or ordered, asymmetrical or grid, they bridge the gap between "art" and "wearable art." Poised as supplicants, wondering, "Will she pick me ?" the brooches await being chosen for the dance. When picked, each piece has its umbilical cord cut. It may leave the family, but as in reality, the connections remain in memories.

For Bodemr and Phillips, that is enough. As sophisticated artists whose cross fertilization has yielded a fluid realm, their sculpture and jewelry have married, yielding an unwritten language that satisfies whether stuck on the wall, on the body, or in the mind.

Judy Wagonfeld is a freelance writer who lives in Seattle, Washington.