The Age of Solberg

The art of Ramona Solberg (b. 1921) - artist, teacher, author, curator, traveler-not only changed Pacific Northwest metals, it changed much of contemporary American jewelry. Her necklaces are few in number (no more than 200 over a 30-year period) but their influence has been vast. Rejecting modernist purity of form and the preciousness of materials common to mid-century American studio jewelry, Solberg pioneered the use of ethnic and found objects in order to reintroduce personal expression in the widest sense of the word.

Ironically for a woman so self-effacing, much of the literature surrounding her has dwelt on her fascinating life. For our purposes, an analytical and interpretive, rather than biographical, approach may answer the question "What does the art of Ramona Solberg mean?" and determine why the period 1975 to 1995 may be called, in retrospect, the Age of Solberg.

Her students from the Seattle Public Schools (she first taught junior-high), Central Washington University (Bill Ritchie, James Marta, Barbara Burnham, Pat Mahar, Robert Iverson), and the University of Washington (Robert Bruya, Flora Book, Elizabeth Chenoweth Palmer, Nadine Kairya, Cheryl Leo-Gwinn, Marilyn Ravanal) have been numerous. A few - Ron Ho and Laurie Hall - have not only been directly influenced enough to comprise, along with non-Solberg student Kiff Slemmons an informal école, they have further transferred and extended her ideas about both the value of informal material construction and the global nature of American craft as a whole. International rather than regional or national, her cultural synthesis and unexpected juxtapositions of Third World souvenirs and mundane Americana have grown out of a lifetime of travel to every corner of the world including Antartica. Solberg's vision (which has been communicated to artists as diverse as Robert Ebendorf and Thomas Mann) is one of inclusiveness rather than exclusion, of visual simplicity rather than complexity, of modesty rather than conceptual pretension.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to clear away some of the clutter of rhetoric comprising the responses to her work to see that work more clearly for what it is, a forum for what she called, in another context, "limitless possibilities of life." Aspects of Solberg's life have been extensively chronicled by other writers, but few critics have sought out possible meaning systems for her art or for that of her associates and colleagues. But before attempting that, let us state a few helpful observations of writers, artists, and her enthusiastic fellows, about that which constitutes the Age of Solberg.

"If we take Solberg at her own words, two thirds art educator, one third jeweler," then it is possible to see all her art as educational. But what are the lessons? In my opinion, the educational and moral goal of her art is to bring humanity closer together. Active in the World Crafts Council as well as a craftsman fellow of the American Craft Council, the artist claims, "If people would travel more, there would be more world understanding."

Firmly believing in a "united humanity through the crafts," Solberg has traveled so extensively that her experiences have accumulated not only as touristic forays but as low-key cultural diplomacy and informal statesmanship.

Pluralist in a time of resurgent nationalism, internationalist in a period of emerging cultural differences, Solberg and her art blur cultural and ethnic differences while preserving unique properties of each borrowed material. Thus, her world view is rooted in the shared global unity of craft and extrapolates memory of place into a unique art object. Never a serialist nor a production jeweler, Solberg approaches each work as a singular aesthetic entity using design, composition, placement and juxtaposition as organizing principles for an art which is immediately accessible on one level but also prone to wider and deeper appreciation and analysis.

Her University of Washington School of Art colleague Spencer Moseley explained her formal powers: "repetition of shape given extended meaning by the repetition of process or pattern of growth. Thus, repetition becomes allusion and illusion." Referring to a key work, Africa (1973), Moseley added, "The title also identifies a formal relationship to another culture. That relationship however is one of assimilation not imitation…[She is a] contemporary primitive."

That may open charges twenty years later of colonialism, racism, and cultural condescension given the recent controversies over the use of the word "primitive," but it would be an inaccurate accusation. Hugely respectful of the art of post colonial nations, Solberg has spoken out against modernizing changes which delete indigenous cultural practices such as beading and jewelry-making and defends herself with humor: "I don't plunder but I sure do shop."

Cindy Cetlin really began the first critical analysis of Solberg discussing Mudra (1983), at length and proposing "many levels of meaning," revealing the necklaces' deeply subjective origins: "Solberg confesses that these necklaces are initially, secretly, made for herself which accounts for their consistently personal iconography."

Less illuminating but on the right track of delineating Solberg's masks and veils, her aesthetic chador, Carolyn Benesh claimed an anti-elitist, strong populist, and exuberant democratic bent for the Seattle artist.

Kiff Slemmons has hinted at parallels to linguistic structures in Solberg's compositions. On the one hand, the various elements may be read as plot or narrative chunks for the wearer to create stories out of (even if we now know these elements had subjective, experiential roots). Comparably, each item might be seen as a word in a poem, an approach first stressed about other American craft artists by critic and editor Rose Slivka in her essay for the Renwick Gallery exhibition, "The Object as Poet." Slivka holds that the unexpected juxtapositions of found objects recalls Joseph Cornell and Solberg's work, with its simple but sophisticated choices of elements, definitely sustains such a reading. She is making wearable haiku.

Slemmons stresses Solberg's "visual language," however, "how things look," and draws attention to how, in Solberg, "the visual language comes first since written or spoken language may not always be available…and visual language changes [depending on] different idioms with different times [and] different cultures."

Placing Solberg in the historical context of modernism, Slemmons reminds us that, as with most of the U.W. School of Art faculty of her day, Solberg's modernist pedigree was impeccable. Her links to modernism, besides her tutelage with Ruth Penington and her postgraduate studies in Norway and England, included the use of assemblage, collage, and the grid as an organizing structure, the primacy of design, and an affinity for ethnic art that could be traced back to Matisse and the Cubists.

The younger artist also points out how courageous Solberg's use of representational imagery was "at a time when abstract pure form signaled 'higher' development along with intellectual detachment."

In this sense, Solberg along with J. Fred Woell, Robert Ebendorf, and Donald Tompkins, was among the few American jewelers to anticipate representation and the cultural content of the postmodern condition: sensitivity to Third World and "marginal" populations; appreciation of popular culture, and the elevation of craft as an alternative to mainstream media such as painting.

The Age of Solberg transversed the modernist period into the postmodern. Another key participant in this crucial transition is Ron Ho. As Sylvia Kennedy wrote of him: "He likes to use objects from different cultures together in one piece. This may stem from his growing up in Hawaii where food, language, and friends from many cultures coexist."

Also an educator, Ho sees the influence of children's art and the sense of play as a central element in Solberg. Giving her credit for his own shift to found object jewelry using ethnic art, Ho recalled: "She could see the beauty of ethnic designs and shapes." And as Laurie Hall pointed out about Ho, "Ron did Ramona better than Ramona!"

With much of his art now obliquely treating his Chinese-American heritage, Ho is indebted to Solberg for both her reverence of Asian art and her courage to use inexpensive materials. Thanks to her, he "gravitated to pendant shapes." Many would agree that Ho's Solbergian mixture of found objects, Asian artifacts and the evocation of travel and personal memories not only mirror the older artist's interests, they often go much farther in piling on elements redolent of the Pacific Rim.

Ho's forms and compositions are much more baroque, however, and in pieces like Treasures of the Orient (1974) and The Rise of the Phoenix (1978-80), entire screenplays seem evoked by the poetic and sensuous combinations. In addition, Ho's compositions are less frontal and grid-like than are Solberg's.

Two other artists, Slemmons and Hall, adapted Solberg's principles to their own ends with comparable individuality. Nanauq (1984) is closest to Solberg's aesthetic among all of Slemmon's metals. Slemmons used silver to echo the original ethnic image, doubling the polar bear head of the original Eskimo ivory cigarette holder, something Solberg had done with her bead necklaces, creating silver "doubles" of trade beads. Like Solberg, Slemmons's art uses found elements to retrieve memory and transform it into personal expression.

Hall's retrieval deals more with American folk art, retaining aspects of nostalgia and cultural memory, adding them to a rich storehouse of humor and pragmatic American character. "My heritage is Northwest Oregon pioneer so I couldn't use all the same kind of found objects they did but I wanted to have it be honest and real, whatever I was doing and Ramona was there encouraging."

Hall warmed to the informality of Solberg's construction which tallied with her own interest in the looser fabrication of American folk art objects (e.g., I Get a kick Out of Champagne, 1989).

Finally, if we recast our views of American art jewelry during the past 30 years, incorporating a tolerance for found objects, downplayed technique, and an affinity to ethnic art, a definition of American metals become wider, more inclusive, and infinitely richer. What the Age of Solberg produced was significant for the artists discussed above. What its purview reveals is a large body of work by a number of artists, including Solberg, whose work deserves greater attention, analysis, and critical scrutiny.

Notes

1. Cindy Cetlin, "Art, Artifact and the Jewelry of Ramona Solberg," Metalsmith, Summer 1985, 14-1; and Carolyn Benesh, "I'm sort of the Henry Ford of jewelry," Ornament, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1989 58-63.

2. Ramona Solberg, conversation with the author, July 12, 1994.

3. Spencer Moseley, "The Necklaces of Ramona Solberg," Craft Horizons, June, 1973, 20-24.

4. Ibid.

5. Solberg, conversation, July 12, 1994.

6. Cetlin, "Art, Artifact and the Jewelry of Ramona Solberg".

7. Benesh, "I'm sort of the Henry Ford of jewelry".

8. Rose Slivka, The Object as Poet. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977.

9. Kiff Slemmons, letter to the author, July 20, 1994.

10. Ibid.

11. Sylvia S.J. Kennedy, "Ron Ho's Transformations: Found Objects into Jewelry," Ornament, Vol. 11, No. 4, 1986.

12. Ron Ho, conversation with the author, July 8, 1994.

13. Laurie Hall, conversation with the author, July 18, 1994.

14. Ibid.

Matthew Kangas, a Seattle art critic and curator, has written for Sculpture, Art in America, America Ceramics, Metalsmith, and GLASS.

By Matthew Kangas

Metalsmith Magazine – 1995 Winter

In association with SNAG‘s

Metalsmith magazine, founded in 1980, is an award winning publication and the only magazine in America devoted to the metal arts.