BIO
Ariella Har-Even is a jeweler and metalsmith currently living in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art.
She is the recipient of a First Juror’s Award from the Enamel Guild North East, a One for the Future Award from NYC Jewelry Week, an AICUO Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts, and was a 2019 Windgate Fellowship nominee. Ariella’s work has been exhibited at various locations including the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan (NY), Riffe Gallery (OH), and in Metalsmith magazine. She is the co-founder of Fuse: Museum to Studio Connections, a creative initiative focused on fostering stronger connections between artists and art historians in the Cleveland area through collaboration and exchange, and Commence Jewelry, an educational initiative that supports emerging artists in the metalsmithing field. Ariella has presented her work on adornment as archetype to the C.G. Jung Institutes of Cleveland and Chicago.
STATEMENT
By adorning our bodies, we create extensions of the nonphysical through a tangible means. Decorating the body not only serves to find joy, expression, or belonging, but is an archetypal and essential part of our humanity. My creative practice focuses on these inherent connections between adornment and identity, as viewed through the lens of ceremony and ritual.
Through the pairing of jewelry with poetry and writing, and a focus on intergenerational grief and the Holocaust, I investigate the spiritual need for burial and mourning, the repercussions of their absence, and the role of adornment in reactivating memory.