Featured Artist — Tina Khmelnitskaya
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- “Russian Fair”
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- “Orange Rhinoceros”
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- “Lady Gaga”
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- Jewelry from “Digits” Series
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- Jewelry from “Digits” Series
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- “French criossant” and brooch “Sunny side up”
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- “Paul Jackson Pollock”
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- Kandinsky necklace
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- “In the country of multi-colored stones and rocks”
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I am an art historian and jewelry designer based in St. Petersburg. While completing my PhD in Art History at the State University of St. Petersburg, I developed my own craft technique to create lightweight, tactile jewelry. This technique serves as the basis for my jewelry collections and defines my approach to form an alternative point of view on the boundary between art and design in jewelry-making traditions.
Life, in all its richness and diversity is a key theme in the oeuvre of my artworks both in their form and content. In bracelets, rings and necklaces I capture any event, work of art or even a sense of a cold sunny morning. My work is greatly inspired by world art, nature, literature and theatre.
Different properties of various materials I combine in most unusual and unexpected ways in order to express an artistic outlook. I love color and unexpected, unusual materials. I am inspired by what I see and experience. My materials include magnets, plastics, sculpey, iron and magnetic filings, etc. Providing a distinctive way for people to express themselves with jewelry, my goal is to create unique, one of a kind art pieces.
These works show the inner freedom of their owners – curious, open to the world and adventurous individuals. From Ancient Greek the word for ornament (χρυσοῦς) translates as “cosmos,” although there exist other definitions such as “peace” and “order.” This link to antiquity and connection between the global and individual views of the world contribute to the development of fresh and unusual ideas embodied in contemporary jewelry as a new form of art.
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Dr. Tina Khmelnitskaya is an art historian and lecturer on the history of contemporary jewelry at the British Higher School of Design. She has received research support for work in Germany from the German Chancellor Fellowship (2005–2006) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2008, 2010, 2013), and from the Max Planck Institute for research in Italy (2010 and 2011). In 2012 she was a Fulbright Scholar at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University.