THE WINNER OF “AMBER TRIP” ART JEWELLERY CONTEST 2019 “RANDOM RAPID HEARTBEATS” Grand Prix JINA SEO Interview by Billie THEIDE
B A LT I C J E W E L L E R Y N E W S
37–2019
p. 66
Billie Theide is Professor of Art in the
School of Art + Design and the Inaugural James Avery Chair in the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a Distinguished Member and Past-President of the Society of North American Goldsmiths. Her creative work has been included in over four hundred fifty international, competitive, group, and one-person exhibitions.
Jina Seo (b.1987 Seoul, South Korea) is an artist, maker, and educator. She received a BFA in Metalwork and Jewelry Design from Kookmin University (Korea) in 2013 and a MFA in Metal from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) in 2016. Her creative practice explores relationships between body, clothing, sexuality, fetish, and space. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has shown work in conjunction with Jewellery Week in Munich, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Sung-Gock Gallery in Seoul, and (AV17) Gallery in Vilnius.
1) You received a MFA in Metal from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. Where are you living now and what are you doing? A lot of exciting things have happened since I received my MFA. I moved to Richmond, Virginia to serve as the Fountainhead Fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University. The residency provided me with studio space, housing, a stipend, and teaching experience. In 2017, I accepted a tenure track teaching position in Metal and Jewelry at Missouri State University in Springfield. I am lucky to be able to pursue a career as an educator and artist simultaneously. When I am not in the classroom, I am in my small studio cutting up old gloves.
01 ⊲
2) What is your interest in vintage leather gloves? My interest in leather gloves originated from my lifelong fascination with fashion and clothing. People primarily wear clothing out of physical necessity; in many circumstances clothing also plays a role in personal expression. The use of secondhand clothing and related wearables serve as a means of documenting human existence. The vintage gloves that I use in my work convey specific memories. Instead of hiding the imperfections, I embrace them as evidence of human interaction. Leather, once a container of life, is a fascinating material. I have mixed feelings while interacting with it. There is a skindeep layer between beauty and guilt, power and pity, brutality and delicacy. I deconstruct vintage leather gloves in order
www.balticjewellerynews.com
⊲