Charleston Magazine – September 2018

Charleston Magazine interviewed silversmith Kaminer Haislip about the collaborative exhibition Interwoven: The Art of Indigo and Silver, which includes her, textile artist Leigh Magar, photographer Jack Alterman, and curator Brandy Culp. Maura Hogan wrote the lovely complimentary Charleston Magazine article below. The exhibition will be on display at the City Gallery in historic downtown Charleston, SC August 25-October 7, 2018. An artist lecture will take place Saturday, September 8 at 2pm.

Visit Kaminer’s website Blog for details.

 

charleston magazine september 2018

 

charleston magazine september 2018 cover

Forging Ahead

By Maura Hogan

Kaminer Haislip was more or less born with a silver spoon in her mouth. “We always had a set of silver for every day,” she recalls of her childhood in Aiken. It’s no wonder she now creates functional works of art in the precious metal—from sleek pitchers to delicate jewelry. After she earned her MFA in silversmithing from Winthrop University in 2005, stylish Southerners began seeking Haislip’s striking pieces; among them was Reese Witherspoon, whose lifestyle brand, Draper James, included her “Magnolia Bowl” in its inaugural 2015 collection. Haislip’s latest project is an exhibit at the City Gallery, “Interwoven: The Art of Indigo & Silver,” guest curated by Brandy S. Culp, which displays her work alongside that of photographer Jack Alterman and textile artist Leigh Magar.

Early inspiration: I grew up in my family’s hardware and appliance business. Being around all of the tools and equipment showed me that working with my hands could be a career. I became interested in metalsmithing in high school when I saw the metal sculptures at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC.

Artistic aesthetic: My work is clean, fluid, and modern. I like the traditions of silver, but I try to design within my own time and not just replicate the pieces my grandparents had.

On the process: I make everything entirely by hand through almost the same techniques as colonial silversmiths. Fortunately for me, technology has advanced—I have rolling mills for silver sheet, compressed gas for my torch, and polishing machines for buffing.

 

silversmith Kaminer Haislip

Silversmith Kaminer Haislip’s elegant-but-practical works are on display in a new City Gallery exhibit

Hidden meanings: Most of my pieces have an underlying concept. My “Nest Bowl,” made of woven sterling silver wire, stems from the idea that how one builds a home by selecting objects is similar to how a bird collects things like twigs and branches for a nest.

Creating a home: My home décor is very eclectic—everything from midcentury vintage and antique pieces my husband and I have inherited to Michael Moran furniture. Contemporary art rules the walls, but we collect from all craft media and periods.

“Interwoven”: Indigo and silver were integral to Charleston’s early economy. Indigo crops generated wealth, and silver was a literal display of that capital. While Leigh and I are both inspired by our mediums’ historical significance, our work is very contemporary in form. Jack’s photos explore indigo and silver through portraits of other local artists who are also influenced by the materials.

Exhibit highlight: Leigh and I collaborated on an installation inspired by the silhouette and the miniature, both traditional Lowcountry art forms. I made three silver oval frames, and Leigh created silhouette-inspired indigo textile portraits to go inside.

To see the full feature, visit http://charlestonmag.com/features/forging_ahead

Charleston City Paper – August 2018

Charleston City Paper featured on August 15, 2018 Interwoven: The Art of Indigo and Silver, the collaborative exhibition that includes artists Kaminer Haislip, Leigh Magar, Jack Alterman, and curator Brandy Culp. Chase Quinn wrote the wonderful Charleston City Paper article below. The exhibition will be on display at the City Gallery in historic downtown Charleston, SC August 25-October 7, 2018. Visit Kaminer’s website Blog for details.

charleston city paper

Making the past present at City Gallery’s Interwoven exhibit

All That Glitters

By Chase Quinn

silver and indigo baskets

 

As Southern Living extolls, “The Good Silver is a Southern stalwart.” Indeed, one automatically pictures immaculate tea sets and monogrammed flatware passed down generation after generation, of the sort you might find on display at the Charleston Museum. On the other side of the silver coin, there’s the stock and lash of chattel slavery, required to extract the indigo that lined the pockets of wealthy planters and set the table, so to speak, for standards of wealth and culture.

It’s a history of which Brandy S. Culp, the Richard Koopman Curator of Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn. and guest curator of the City Gallery’s upcoming exhibit Interwoven: The Art of Indigo and Silver, is well aware. The exhibit, she explains, is “ultimately about layers of history and meaning, and how we find meaning in materials.” The show will feature three artists heavily influenced by Charleston history and culture including silversmith Kaminer Haislip, textile designer Leigh Magar, and photographer Jack Alterman.

The project began two years ago when Haislip, one of the few formally-trained silversmiths practicing in Charleston, and Magar, known for her “seed to stitch” project, which takes indigo grown in her own garden and uses it to create hand-dyed and hand-stitched garments and goods, approached Culp.

“They wanted me to guest curate this exhibit, so we started with discussions of silver and indigo and how they related.”

With her rich background in the history of decorative arts, Culp explains that indigo and silver were both highly prized as raw materials throughout the ages, globally traded as commodities, and historically transformed by artisans into objects of desire.

“There’s a lot of commonality between these two as raw materials,” she says, “So what these artists have done is they are looking at these two transformative and symbolically imbued mediums and exploring how people actually shaped resources that, in turn, influenced society.”

In fact, it is South Carolina’s own Eliza Lucas Pinckney, the 16-year-old daughter of a wealthy planter, who is credited with first introducing and successfully cultivating indigo in the American colonies in 1742. Long before the ubiquity of today’s blue jeans, at the time, indigo dye was rare and expensive. Like silver, it was a symbol of status and wealth. In the two decades after its introduction, indigo would become one of the colony’s largest exports, second only to rice. That also led to a spike in the importation of enslaved labor to carry out the challenging and time-intensive process of extracting the dye, which could involve pounding the plant for up to 20 hours.

The title of the show, Interwoven, however, refers not only to this shared history and symbolism, but also to how the past and present are worked into the artists’ contemporary interpretations of these mediums. Culp explains, for example, that while Magar and Haislip have collaborated on a number of pieces for the exhibit that meld the elements of indigo and silver, they will also be displaying individual works. For Haislip, that means giving visitors, far removed from the processes of metalwork, the experience of how she forms and forges her pieces, which, while heavily influenced by tradition, are completely contemporary in their design.

“In today’s society, so many people look at her work and think that it must be cast, or that it’s fabricated,” says Culp. “She is a traditional silversmith still using a lot of the tools and the processes that people have been using for hundreds of years.”

Alterman, a Charleston native perhaps best known for his diverse portraits that capture the city’s many faces, was brought in to tie the whole story together. Through his photography, he will not only document the work on display, but will also have a series of portraits of other local artisans directly or indirectly connected to the craftmanship of indigo and silver.

In addition to the label copy that will provide some historical context for the role Africans and African Americans played in the production of indigo and silver, Culp indicates that Alterman’s contribution is also important because his portraits showcase contemporary African-American artists working in or connected to these mediums as well, including Jonathan Green and Arianne King Comer.

“This exhibit is not a comprehensive look at the subject of indigo and silver,” she acknowledges. “It’s a very specific look at these materials through the eyes of three artists. There are so many talented people that are both metalworkers and textile artists involved in indigo.”

To get a full picture of this interweaving narrative, Culp also recommends that audiences attend the artist talk, which will take place on Sept. 8 at 2 p.m., where the exhibitors will be on hand to discuss the most important stories in their work and to take audience questions.

Charleston Magazine – August 2018

Charleston Magazine highlighted in their August issue Interwoven: The Art of Indigo and Silver, the collaborative exhibition that includes artists Kaminer Haislip, Leigh Magar, Jack Alterman, and curator Brandy Culp. The exhibition will be on display at the City Gallery in historic downtown Charleston, SC August 25-October 7, 2018. Visit Kaminer’s website Blog for details.

charleston magazine august 2018

charleston magazine august 2018

American Craft Magazine – August/September 2018

American Craft magazine highlighted in their August/September issue Interwoven: The Art of Indigo and Silver, the collaborative exhibition that includes artists Kaminer Haislip, Leigh Magar, Jack Alterman, and curator Brandy Culp. The exhibition will be on display at the City Gallery in historic downtown Charleston, SC August 25-October 7, 2018. Visit Kaminer’s website Blog for details.

american craft magazine

american craft magazine

Silver Magazine – July/August 2018

Silver Magazine highlighted in their July/August issue Interwoven: The Art of Indigo and Silver, the collaborative exhibition that includes artists Kaminer Haislip, Leigh Magar, Jack Alterman, and curator Brandy Culp. Silversmith Kaminer Haislip’s handcrafted silver pitcher was the feature image on the far right side of the second image below.

The exhibition will be on display at the City Gallery in historic downtown Charleston, SC August 25-October 7, 2018. Visit Kaminer’s website Blog for details.

silver magazine

silver magazine feature

Hyperallergic – February 22, 2018

Hyperallergic Article:

Artists and Designers Tell New Stories of Old Silver

by Sarah Archer

The Hyperallergic article”Artists and Designers Tell New Stories of Old Silver” by Sarah Archer features the silver “Pillinger” Kaminer Haislip and Constantin Boym collaborated on for the Museum of the City of New York exhibition New York Silver: Then and Now. See below for excepts from Hyperallergic’s online article and click on the link at the bottom to view the entire article.

“The difference between these two high-profile silver endeavors is that while Tiffany’s tips its hat to Pop Art with a Warholian copy-and-paste premise, New York Silver: Then and Now mines history to produce something totally original. The artists and designers in the Museum of the City of New York show have explored the silver objects of another world — that of New York of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and thoughtfully interpreted their forms to speak to contemporary concerns. Doing so in a precious metal, the material of heirlooms and presentation vases, gives the effort the respect it’s due.”

“It’s not an accident that silver makes us think of grandma, whether or not our own personal grandmas actually collected, used, or displayed silver — most of them may not have. But grandmothers are culturally coded as the keepers of domestic tradition. “Grandmother’s silver” may actually be silver-plate rather than sterling, but the phrase still sounds rather refined. The works in Falino’s exhibition are designed to upend this idea, but they largely do so with a posh accent. The contemporary works range from subtle to campy, which makes them good analogs to silver from different time periods — colonial silver looks positively minimalist when compared with the flamboyant spectacle of a Victorian presentation vase. There are some witty takes on forms of hollowware that have long fallen out of regular use.

In response to John Hastier’s lovely 1750 silver porringer (a small bowl with a decorative handle), the industrial designer Constantin Boym and silversmith Kaminer Haislip created the “Pillinger,” a small dish whose handle is decorated with a design of round and oblong pills.”

Metalsmith Magazine – February 2018

Metalsmith magazine featured on their cover the silver Pillinger silversmith Kaminer Haislip collaborated with industrial designer Constantin Boym on for the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibition New York Silver, Then and Now. It was also included in the article about the historic and contemporary silver exhibition. The New York silver focused exhibition will be on display at the museum until June 2018.

metalsmith magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Antiques & Fine Art Magazine – 18th Anniversary Issue 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Handcrafted America TV Appearance

I will be featured on the Insp television show Handcrafted America this Friday, October 27 at 8:30pm! Tune in to see me share my silversmithing process with the amazing Jill Wagner!

The Magazine Antiques – September/October 2017 Issue

The Magazine Antiques featured the silver Pillinger silversmith Kaminer Haislip collaborated with industrial designer Constantin Boym on for the Museum of the City of New York’s exhibition New York Silver, Then and Now. It was detailed in the article about the historic and contemporary silver exhibition. The New York silver focused exhibition will be on display at the museum until June 2018.