on selling their work. In other words, these are not “academic artists” embedded in university programs. With a few notable exceptions—such as Alan Revere, who founded and ran the Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts in San Francisco for forty years—AJDC artists are entrepreneurs plying their trade in the commercial world. As Heinrich puts it, “What’s unique to us is that we all have working studios. We’re supporting ourselves and our families with the work we do.” And while meeting the demands of their clientele requires keeping their skills honed and their designs fresh, it can be isolating. “Jewelers are traditionally a somewhat secretive group,” she says. “People don’t let other jewelers into their studio. They don’t share their recipes, how they alloy their gold. This group is very different. There’s a spirit of sharing, but only because everybody in this group is very strong.” In his book Thinking through Craft, Glenn Adamson notes that among the contemporary craft movements that exploded in the latter half of the twentieth century, none was more eclectic in absorbing and reinterpreting the “visual vocabularies of modern art” than the studio jewelry movement. Calling it a “magpie art form,” Adamson notes that studio jewelers borrowed and often intermingled elements from Constructivism, Surrealism, and Expressionism, as well as everything “from medievalizing Arts and Crafts enamels to Art Deco diamonds and costume jewelry, to the smoothed forms of contemporary Scandinavian design.”3 This eclectic assortment of styles and influences is evident in the work of the AJDC artists presented here. Indeed, the very first AJDC project, undertaken in 1995 when the group was somewhat smaller, seems to have tackled this issue of influence head-on. “Everyone was given a copy of the Mona Lisa,” recalls founding member José Hess. “We had to add something to the painting, and it had to be a piece of jewelry. The piece of jewelry was then attached to the painting and became part of it.” The theme acknowledged both a link and a debt to the Western canon of fine art dating to the Renaissance. At the same time, with its use of appropriation, multiples, and pastiche, it was a thoroughly modern project that would have met with wholehearted approval from the likes of Marcel Duchamp. The ensuing projects have been less art-historical and more open-ended, encompassing elements of nature (WATER, ICE, FIRE), shapes and motifs (CUBE, WHEEL, SPHERE, PYRAMID, SPIRAL), or more abstract concepts (FLIGHT, TENSION, EXPLOSION). Collectively, they offer a fascinating glimpse at the creative process, as the artists respond, conceptually, materially, and sometimes 14