|
Carla Reiter
was born in 1951 in Palo Alto, California and grew up in Indiana and Illinois.
She went to Indiana University to study silversmithing but switched to
sculpture after absorbing the rudiments of jewelry technique. She graduated
with a degree in art in 1973 and spent the next 20-odd years investigating
the world. She studied physics, earned a graduate degree in cultural
anthropology, and worked as a nightclub singer, magazine writer, and museum
curator. |
|
|
|
During these years, she continued to
make jewelry, teaching herself the techniques required to make the work she
imagined. In 1997, she became a full-time metalsmith. From the beginning,
her work took two distinct directions. She developed a limited-production
line of silver and gold-leafed fabricated work, which investigates simple
forms in repetition. And she began knitting metal, combining fabricated
solid elements with the almost weightless knitted ones. These pieces
increasingly began to combine the knitted silver and gold with
copper—traditionally a “non-precious” metal – and diamonds.
Both directions reflect Carla’s
characteristic sensibility. “In my jewelry, I strive to blend an almost
primitive handmade feeling with a refined sense of design,“ she says. “I’m
not especially interested in technique for its own sake or in perfection –
if I could, I’d abandon tools altogether and just work the metal with my
hands. "I want to adorn the body, simply,
and with as direct a connection between the idea and the hand as I can forge. All of these pieces are
meant to be worn. Someone once told me that my jewelry only “wakes up” when
a woman puts it on. That seems right to me.” |
|
