The Gallery Collection: Art History Jewelry
The Gallery Collection is jewelry inspired by art history, long walks in monumental museums, and the little-told stories of the images and symbols that shape our view of the past and present. It by no means even begins to encompass the vast history of art, which spans every inhabited place great or small across the globe and includes every culture on our diverse planet. Consider it more like a room—a small gallery—wherein I’ve hung a handful of meaningful works to contemplate and paid homage to them with my own method of interpretive reproduction.
Given the time, assets and freedom, I could have never stopped making this collection; that is to say that if your favorite artist isn’t featured, well, neither is mine. I also explicitly chose works by artists who were active in the early 20th Century and before, as I felt uncomfortable re-interpreting works by living or recently living artists for sale.
This collection is dedicated to my brother Steven, who was an avid reader and lover of all things history and art. He especially loved Gauguin, and as you’ll learn from my Van Gogh-inspired necklace, had an affinity for a certain painting by the artist.
Georgia O’Keeffe-Inspired Floral Cow Skull Necklace
Georgia O’Keeffe-Inspired Floral Cow Skull Necklace
Georgia O’Keeffe is simultaneously one of the most celebrated woman artists of the 20th Century and one of the most misunderstood. You’ve definitely seen her work, the most well known of it being large-scale, magnified views of colorful, beautiful flowers. You’ve probably also heard that the flowers are erotic representations of female anatomy. This interpretation of O’Keeffe’s work has been perpetuated for decades and widely accepted, despite the artist’s lifelong struggle to debunk the sexual interpretations foisted onto her work by male art critics and the “male gaze.”
Inspired by the New Mexico landscape and culture she fell in love with and called home, O’Keeffe’s work often included animal skulls. Sun-bleached and weathered presumably by the desert, the skulls are hauntingly beautiful memento mori. Her well-known 1931 work Cow’s Skull: Red White and Blue elevates the weather-beaten skull to national symbol.
My Georgia O’Keeffe-inspired floral cow skull necklace combines the artist’s motifs of skulls and flowers in a solid cast bronze pendant that hangs from an 18-inch 14K gold-filled chain that can be fastened at shorter lengths if that’s your preference.