Please join us in welcoming Thomas Mann to our shop for a one of a kind trunk show at Rebecca Myers Collection in the Village of Cross Keys.
“Thomas Mann has been in the vanguard of American art jewelry design for nearly five decades. His compositions were among the first to focus not on the intrinsic value of precious metals and gemstones, but rather the idea and content. Following the collage/assemblage strategies of early-20th-century sculptors, he combines silver and non-precious metal elements with plastics and found objects. His distinctive wearable pieces - ‘jewelry objects’, as he likes to call them - and his sculpture have been included in national and international traveling art exhibitions; collected by art museums; sold in shops, galleries and museum stores; written about; and worn by proud collectors.” —Lloyd E. Herman, founding director and director emeritus of the Renwick Gallery (1971-1986).
Thomas Mann will be in our showroom Friday, November 28 through Sunday, November 30. He will give a lecture on his work and the studio craft movement on Friday evening at 6:00 pm in Suite 86 (next to Renaissance Fine Arts gallery). Light refreshments served.
“We’re immersed in an age of ever-expanding information and technology and it’s sometimes hard to remember that we’re human. Techno-Romantic jewelry objects are everyday talismans that talk about our connection to and separation from that technology.” —Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann began making jewelry in high school and has been doing it ever since. An Icon of the American Craft Jewelry movement and a full-time practicing professional artist for close to 50 years. He describes himself as an artist working in the medium of jewelry and sculpture. Inspired by parts from machines, electronic instruments, costume jewelry, and old postcards and photos, Mann’s recurring but always changing parts give his work its storytelling quality and theatricality. He calls this design vocabulary, which combines industrial aesthetics and materials with evocative themes and romantic imagery, “Techno-Romantic”.
Highlights of Mann’s career include: being a featured artist for Peabody Award winning PBS television series “ Craft in America”, which additionally was streamed to launch the PBS Online Arts Portal; competing on Food Network’s “All Star Academy”; having his artwork in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institute’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. as well as the Museum of Art and Design in New York; and creating his traveling exhibition “Storm Cycle — An Artist Responds to Hurricane Katrina” which traveled to museums and galleries including Bellevue Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and Ferrin Gallery at SOFA Chicago.
Thomas Mann lives and works in New Orleans aware he oversees a jewelry design and production studio, sculpture studio, and gallery.
Show Dates and Times:
Friday, November 28: 10:00am - 6:00pm
Saturday, November 29: 10:00am - 6:00pm, artist lecture from Thomas Mann 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Sunday, November 30: 12:00pm - 4:00pm
Jewelry
Whimsical and unique wearable art from Thomas Mann.
Sculpture
Small pieces that explore bigger themes.