Marion Glass: Senior Portfolio: Lecture: Ted Noten

I had the privilege of attending Ted Noten's lecture about his jewelry design career on Tuesday. Noten is a Dutch artist who believes that jewelry is anything we wear or carry on our bodies. His work is very conceptual, yet simple at the same time, following his amusing logic and curious thoughts about the world around him.

The title for the first portion of the lecture was "Once a bricklayer, always a bricklayer." Noten grew up working in his father's brick making factory, which is where he said he first realized that he enjoyed working with his hands. He was expected to follow in his father's footsteps by taking over the factory, but grew bored with the repetitive pattern of bricklaying and began making jewelry at the age of 24.

Of his art school experience, Noten said that he originally struggled with the conceptualization of his work explaining that, "When you make a move with your hands, you have to explain to the art teacher why you did it." As a result, his first concepts originated from historical facts that he translated into jewelry form.

More recently, Noten seems to have absolutely no issue with conceptual thinking. In the last few years, Noten has created quite an interesting body of work. His concepts shifted towards things happening directly around him when he started making the "Lady-K" bags. This series is a group of purses made from acrylic-encased weapons - a response to the violence that he saw happening in the world.

Noten is currently working on a new series, titled "Haunted by 36 Women." For this body of work, Noten chose to depict various female archetypes through different animals and objects in his jewelry designs. Some of the pieces that he showed at the lecture included "The Ice Cream Girl," "The Girl Next Door," and "Miss Piggy." This series is being created by huge sketches Noten puts together of life-size objects, that are then 3D printed into jewelry-size miniatures. This process results in beautiful detail and life-like quality in every piece.

Some of my favorites from Ted Noten's portfolio are pictured below. To learn more about him and his processes, please visit his website here.