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Karin Jones

Karin Jones is a multi-disciplinary Canadian artist with a background in jewellery and metalwork. After receiving a Diploma in Jewellery Art & Design from Vancouver Community College in 1993, she pursued a successful career as an independent artisan and goldsmith for 20-plus years. Since 2007, Jones’s artistic practice has shifted from traditional jewellery into multi-media sculpture and contemporary art. She received an MFA in Craft from NSCAD University in 2018. Her work has been exhibited across the world and is held in several permanent collections including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Ornamental Metal Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, and Cambridge Galleries Idea/ Exchange in Cambridge Ontario. Jones is an educator and the Department Head of Jewellery Art and Design at Vancouver Community College. Her current work explores how historical narratives shape our identities.

Life and Education

Karin Jones was born and raised in Vancouver. She graduated with a Diploma in Jewellery Art & Design from Vancouver Community College in 1993. From 1995-1996 she was an apprentice under Master Goldsmiths Heinz and Hermann Laatzen in Hamburg, Germany. Jones also studied under goldsmiths and blacksmiths in Finland and the United States. In 2018 she completed a Master of Fine Arts at NSCAD University through a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) award for graduate work. Jones describes part of the reason she choose NSCAD University was personal: “my father is from Nova Scotia, and I wanted to get to know the place he was from, and my relatives there, a little better.” Jones is a descendent of Black Loyalists who settled in Nova Scotia during the American Revolutionary War.

Career

Jewellery and Metalwork

In the first part of her career Jones worked in Vancouver as a goldsmith, jewellery designer and independent artisan. She created and sold her own line of silver and enamel jewellery and created personalized works for individual commissioners. Jones also mastered damascening, a method of inlaying different metals into one another. Jones approached jewellery as art and was interested in concept-driven work, however, within a commercial setting she describes how “it is difficult to convey to the public that it can be more than a fashion object.” Jones’s desire to express messages through her artistic practice encouraged her to think critically about the contexts in which her work was displayed. Gradually, she transitioned from commercial contexts into the contemporary art world. For example, Jones’s Farm Tools Series, in which she used damascene to inlay gold and silver patterns into steel garden tools, was displayed at Point Gallery on Salt Spring Island in 2010. This beautification of utilitarian objects addressed the romanticization of rural life among other themes.

Selected Multimedia Work and Themes

From 2012-2013 Jones created a series of brooches made of stainless steel, brass, gold plate, and synthetic hair. These works are an adaptation of Victorian jewellery which incorporated a loved one’s hair as an expression of mourning. In a performance photographed by Kristy Depper, Jones wore the brooches paired with matching wigs while striking goofy poses to playfully critique the racism imbued within social standards of beauty. In 2015, Jones expanded her exploration of race and beauty in her work Worn: Shaping Black Feminine Identity. This multimedia work consisted of a Victorian mourning dress made of braided black artificial hair integrations, surrounded by cotton balls, some of which contained the artist’s own hair. The work was part of the Of Africa Project at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2015. It addressed the simultaneous absence and presence of people of African descent in Canada’s historical narrative. The dress’s silhouette references the nineteenth century origins of modern beauty standards that developed within the contexts of European imperialism. Jones drew inspiration from Sarah Baartman, an African woman whose body was exotified by Europeans and influenced the development of the bustle and the perpetuation of stereotypes of Black women's bodies. Jones chose cotton balls as symbols of slavery to express personal mourning over its legacies and “sadness that our own beauty of people of African descent is not completely acceptable- at least it’s not accepted by us.” Jones returned to the material legacies of cotton recently in Freed, a site-specific installation in the exhibition History is Rarely Black and White at the Agnes Etherington Arts Centre, 2021-2022. In the exhibition, Jones’s work, which consisted of cotton balls filled with raw cotton and black hair, encircled a historic cotton garment to visually remember the labour and human loss implicated in its creation. Jones also explored the legacies of slavery in her 2018 series (body of work). The series consisted of eight metal neckpieces which integrated additional materials including human hair, corn, and leather and were mounted on black wooden panels. The panels referenced the tensions surrounding the recognition of jewellery within the art world and the absence of the black body in traditional western portraiture. The neckpieces were inspired by the shackles and restraints enslaved persons were forced to wear. In an interview, Jones explained that the works are mounted at neck height so visitors “might imagine what it feels like to wear that identity everyday.”

Recent Work

In January 2022, the culminating exhibition of Jones’s studio residency at the Burrard Arts Foundation opened to the public. The exhibition entitled The Golden Section consists of geometric arrangements of blonde hair extensions on square panels alongside a necklace which juxtaposes a blonde braid with a tube holding African hair. The exhibition is a continuation of Jones’s interest in hair, exploring its connections to global trade and the damaging effects of eurocentric beauty standards worldwide.

Reception

Karin Jones’s focus in her work on the way historical narratives shape our identities has been received as vital to conversations about the legacies of slavery and anti-black racism in twenty-first century Canada. A review of her series (body of work) described how Jones “yanks us back into awareness not only of this shared history, but also how it binds us together in the present.” In reviews of both (body of work) and Worn: Shaping Black Feminine Identity, the significance of Jones’s centering of the oft-overlooked history of slavery in Canada and the ways it has shaped African-Canadian identity has been emphasized. Jones’s exploration of her own identity as a biracial woman through her artistic practice has lead her ask how identity is formed, assigned, or even selectively worn like jewellery. Her work has been recognized as an affecting way to prompt viewers to reflect on their own identities within this shared history. As one reviewer of Worn: Shaping Black Feminine Identity described, Jones’s work “uses beauty to embody painful truths.” Jones’s thoughtful use of different mediums and modes of display has been noted as essential to the powerful messages her works convey.

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

·      (body of work). La Centrale, Montréal, Quebec, 2019.

·      Precious. The Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford, BC. 2019

·      (body of work). MFA Thesis Exhibition, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia. 2018

·      Worn. Installation, McIntosh Gallery, London, ON. 2016.

·      Worn: Shaping Black Feminine Identity. Installation, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON. (Commission). 2015

·      Tributaries. National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, TN. 2013.

·      Karin Jones: Works in Damascene Metal. Circle Craft Gallery, Vancouver. 2011.

·      Hearts and Nerves. Crafthouse Gallery, Vancouver. Solo exhibition of gold and silver inlay on steel. 2008

2-Person Exhibitions

·      With Sara Khan. Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver, BC. 2022.

·      With Amy Malbeuf. Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond, BC. Curated by Nan Capogna. 2020.

Selected Group Exhibitions

·      Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, ON. Curated by Melanie Egan. 2022

·      The Choir is Speaking. Campbell River Art Gallery, Campbell River, BC. Curated by Jenelle M Pasiechnik. 2022.

·      History is Rarely Black or White. Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON. Curated By Jason Cyrus. 2021.

·      Uncommon Language. Vancouver Art Gallery, Curated by Zoë Chan. 2020.

·      Something More Than Nothing. Evergreen Cultural Centre, Coquitlam, BC. Curated by Adrienne Fast. 2019.

·      Crafting a Legacy. National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, TN. 2019.

·      Unexpected. Craft Council of BC Gallery, Vancouver, BC. 2016.

·      The Red and the Black (World of Threads Festival 2014). The Gallery at Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre, Oakville, ON. 2014.

·      Fibreworks 2014. Cambridge Galleries Idea/ Exchange, Cambridge, ON. 2014.

·      Metallicity: Art Jewellery by the Vancouver Metal Arts Association. Deer Lake Gallery, Burnaby, BC. 2013.

·      Pushing Boundaries: Circle Craft 40 Years. Pendulum Gallery, Vancouver, BC. 2013.

·      Design Sans Frontières: Metal Artists in Collaboration. Design Exchange, Toronto, ON. 2013.

·      Potluck: MFA Group Show. Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, NS. 2012.

·      Women Who Work with Metal. Maple Ridge Art Gallery, Maple Ridge, BC. Curated by Barbara Duncan. 2011.

·      Idyll: a Salt Spring Pastorale. The Point Gallery, Salt Spring Island, BC. Curated By Margaret Day. 2010.

·      By Hand/ BC and Yukon, The Art of Craft. Museum of Vancouver. 2010.

·      Unity and Diversity. Canadian Pavilion, Cheongju International Craft Biennale, South Korea. 2009.

·      Led by Form: Production in Series. Fiskars, Finland. 2009.

·      Canadian Handmade Products Exhibition. Canadian Embassy, Tokyo, Japan. Curated by Yukiko Shiina. 2003.