Her long-ago decision about how she wanted to produce jewelry demands discipline and concentration, and a sure, steady hand as she knits and wraps her way along the wire, fabricating it into an instrument of wondrous adornment. MARY LEE HU WORKING WITH WIRE Carolyn L. E. Benesh simple line of wire in silver or gold transcends itself are here to demonstrate our capacity to make, and make A in the hands of Mary Lee Hu, as she plaits, twines, they do, creating a sort of infinity of the possible, and knits, and braids its length into woven forms of endlessly variable. unassailable beauty. She has kept to this practice since she Sometimes there is a close relationship between an discovered early that weaving in metal is what she was meant individual’s nature and how it is expressed through work, in to do. It would be her life’s work, a satisfying way of achieving Hu’s case with the weaving of metal. Self-described as shy and aesthetic fulfillment for now approaching fifty years as a studio naturally reticent, her methodical and contemplative spirit is jeweler and metalsmith. appropriate for the jewelry she designs. Her long-ago decision She says that she is playing games with wire; if so then about how she wanted to produce jewelry demands discipline Hu provokes the response that creating from a void is some and concentration, and a sure, steady hand as she knits and very serious form of gaming, perhaps similar to how human wraps her way along the wire, fabricating it into an instrument sentience developed so many millennia ago on this planet. of wondrous adornment. Her artworks in jewelry are evidence that the extraordinary In the solitude of her studio overlooking Puget Sound, power of humans to create is an amazing accomplishment life’s turbulence and more overwhelming elements are not and a reminder of the still untapped potential of our introduced and Hu quietly engages in creating. That she does species as makers. It is astonishing how little we are aware so in this manner certainly conjures up the importance of her of this ever-present fact as we live the hours and days and years personal space as a form of refuge, a safe and positive way to of a personal lifetime experiencing the world. Somehow we replenish and nourish oneself. In such an environment, if she have to be told this over and over again; perhaps our attention is to successfully complete her jewelry, her way of working span is too overwhelmed to fully appreciate this gift we have especially demands her full attention without distraction by been given. But, thankfully, visual artists like other creators events outside the studio’s walls. DETAIL OF BRACELET #60 of eighteen and twenty-two karat gold; 9.2 x 10.2 x 4.1 centimeters, 1999. Collection of Elise B. Michie. 42 ORNAMENT 35.3.2012 All jewelry photographs by Douglas Yaple, except cover photograph by Susan Dirk; courtesy of Mary Lee Hu. There is also a public face to Hu. An understated but Chicago; Columbus Museum of Fine Arts, Ohio; Goldsmiths’ nevertheless fierce commitment to sustaining a creative life Hall, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and self-confidence in the quality of her artworks require Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, being her best and vocal advocate. She has been an educator at Houston; National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis; various institutions for most of her professional life, Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, beginning in 1968 as an instructor of art at Southern Illinois Washington, D.C.; Tacoma Art Museum, Washington; University, Carbondale, and concluding in 2006 when she Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and Yale University retired her professorship in art at the University of Washington, Art Gallery, Connecticut. Seattle, where she was the only artist in the country to have Her biography contains a multiplicity of books and articles proposed and taught a course in the world history of body in which she is included or the subject, but it also enumerates adornment as part of the curriculum. She continues to teach the visual array of her work in group and solo exhibitions at various workshops around the country where she generously over the decades. And what a fireworks of display it has been, a shares her technical knowledge and promotes the critical dramatic statement in the art of personal adornment importance of lifelong learning as a measure of professional unfolding first in silver, and now in her metal of choice, gold. and personal growth. Since discovering how much she likes working in gold, it has She has received many grants, awards and honors, among become a driving passion to divulge how to showcase its soothing them an invitation to donate her personal papers to The reflective surface but also reveal its mysterious inner glow. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, for a Hu chooses eighteen karat gold for stiffness and twenty- Mary Lee Hu research collection. Hu’s work crosses many two karat gold for rich color and flexibility. Additionally, major public collections, notably the Art Institute of twenty-four gauge wire in eighteen karat gold is used for the NECKPIECE #8 of fine silver, twelve karat gold-filled wire, boar’s CHOKER #40 of fine and sterling silver, twenty-two karat gold, tusks; 25.4 x 14.0 x 3.8 centimeters, 1973. Collection of the artist. lacquered copper; 25.4 × 16.5 × 3.8 centimeters, 1978. Collection of National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis. 43 ORNAMENT 35.3.2012 warp in twining and thirty gauge twenty-two karat for the weft. For framing, the wires are all eighteen karat gold. With three different types of gold, that is it, not much variety, but the result is something else entirely. Her works vibrate with inherent energy, fresh and spontaneous. Even though conceived with much deliberation, they are unfailingly, intuitively correct. There is no false note to discern and quibble over. How lucky to have found a perfect fit between medium, technique and material. In delightfully laconic words but nevertheless accurate, Hu says her toolkit is simple. And indeed she works with great economy of means, a tip of the hat to her natural inclination toward self-sufficiency and lack of dependence on materials that might only complicate and obscure the process. They contain wire cutters and pliers (her favorites are chain-nosed, followed by round, flat, half-round, and flat-forming) An 8/0 jeweler’s saw is for cutting through twined parts. A borax-based paste flux and acetylene-air torch take care of the soldering. She has drawplates to pull her own wire and a rolling mill for flattening wire frames for twining. A flexible shaft polishes some of the heavier wire edges, but usually a brass scratch brush takes BROOCH #32 of eighteen and twenty-two karat gold; 11.1 × 6.4 × 1.9 centimeters, 2009. Collection of care of the finish. Arkansas Arts Center Foundation, Gift of John and The final important implement is her hands. With these tools Robyn Horn. she draws from the textile traditions of the world, used by Vikings in twisted or braided wire torques, wire chains from Tibet and India, BRACELET #62 of eighteen and twenty-two karat gold; Thai plaited jewelry, wire mesh from China. Influenced by her world 7.0 × 8.9 × 7.0 centimeters, 2002. Collection of Museum travels and keen interest in objects of ethnography, Hu seems to of Arts & Design, New York. Museum Purchase with have possessed an inner compass directing herself, ever moving her funds provided by Ann Kaplan. toward the singular achievement of making personal objects of BRACELET #37 of eighteen and twenty-two karat gold, incomparable, exacting beauty, timeless and vibrant. Somehow she lapis lazuli; 7.0 × 8.3 × 1.3 centimeters, 1986. Collection of the artist. RING #90 of eighteen and twenty-two karat gold; 3.5 × 2.5 × 0.6 centimeters, 1998. Collection of the artist. 44 ORNAMENT 35.3.2012 CHOKER #81 of eighteen and twenty-two karat gold; 16.5 × 17.8 × 2.5 centimeters, 1993. Collection of The Newark Museum, Purchase 2007, Helen McMahon Brady Cutting Fund. Left: CHOKER #70 of eighteen and twenty-two karat gold; 15.2 × 24.1 × 7.6 centimeters, 1985. Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Gift of Donna Schneier, 2007. senses, absorbs and extracts from ancient and folk cultures control was gained over the design and with other their creative core and transmutes them into fully modifications—gaining confidence over time—her signature contemporaneous forms without leaving a telltale trail of surface pattern and texture steadily emerged, lending a inspirational derivation. Hu’s work is so undeniably her and necessary quality of beauty to a piece. no one else; such that it does not even leave the mark of her It is a source of fascination that so much remarkable American identity, unlike most of her peers. She was not work could be based on the elemental act of repetition— attracted to the last century’s conscious mission of roughing up the repetitive process of weaving wire—without being and slapping around artistic conventions but to something uninspiring and boring, a path to failure. Hu’s respect for much more amorphous and enigmatic. It was a good choice jewelry’s traditional concern for careful processes and for her reflective temperament: putting her ego aside, her potential for both variation and symmetry is accompanied by personal quest sought to express the simplicity and beauty that her fastidious search for perfection and meeting self-imposed implicitly lies at the heart of true creation, whether in the challenges to resolve the hindrances that could prohibit a work natural world or wrought by human hands.