Metal Program Director Myra Mimlitsch-Gray delivers lecture at Yale Art Gallery symposium
Art Professor and Metal Program Director Myra Mimlitsch-Gray was invited to present at a Yale University Art Gallery fall symposium, “Of Substance: Crafting Narrative in Contemporary American Jewelry and Metalwork.”
Along with jeweler and New Paltz alumna Tanya Crane ’12 (Metal) and contemporary art curator Jeannine Falino, Mimlitsch-Gray gave a lecture focused on the symbolic and ideological use of materials in contemporary studio jewelry.
The symposium was held in connection with the Yale Art Gallery’s current exhibition “American Jewelry: The Susan Grant Lewin Collection,” where Mimlitsch-Gray’s “Timepiece” brooch is featured as part of a jewelry installation of two dozen pieces donated by author and jewelry collector Susan Grant Lewin.
The gallery’s gift collection also boasts pieces from New Paltz Metal Program alumni Sarah Abramson ’08g, Lisa Gralnick ’89g , Sergey Jivetin ’01g and Beverly Penn ’89g.
As a metalsmith, Mimlitsch-Gray explores craft as both subject and object, engaging with metalsmithing’s methods, history, and discourses regarding jewelry design pedagogy. “Timepiece” serves as a strong demonstration of her artistic and conceptual process: through pendular movement the stone rakes across glass, revealing passage of time while subverting perceptions of the prestige of diamonds by displaying them as agents of destruction.
The 2016 Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art retrospective exhibition “In/Animate” showcased a decade’s worth of her work. Her work was also featured in the Dorsky’s New Paltz art faculty exhibitions such as “Collective Consciousness” and “Intimately Familiar.”