Artist Bio: Ruta Reifen

by Metalwerx on March 31, 2017

Spending most of her life by the Mediterranean has greatly influenced Ruta Reifen’s aesthetic and the work that she creates. Her Israeli heritage also informs her unique design approach. Ruta identifies forms from the sea as symbolizing splendor and happiness. These forms, with their flowing lines, and endless shapes and colors, are the source of her creative work. A synergy of classic silhouettes, coral-like texture, self-invented organic forms and evolving color story create the romantic feel she desires to extend to the wearer of her work.

AW10

Ruta has always been surrounded by inspiration, but her calling to goldsmithing came in 2001 when she attended a class at the Central Saint Martin’s College of Art in London and instantly feel in love with working with the material as well as the art of jewelry making. After completing her degree in Jewelry Design at Shenkar College of Design in Israel and receiving a Master’s Degree from RISD she began working as an educator as well as designer for a large variety of high-end fashion brands and jewelry lines. In 2015 she made the decision to become the sole proprietor of her own jewelry-making business after nearly a decade of developing product for others. She sees managing her own fine jewelry business as her main focus while still finding time to practice, make personal work, teach and engage in curatorial work. This balance is the perfect synergy of learning, educating and engaging and they all inform her creative process.

ruta.hands

All of the work that Ruta creates is made in her Brooklyn studio. She first hand carves her organic forms out of wax. Each piece is unique, bold yet delicate, full of dimension and texture. She then electroforms each wax piece in 14K gold in her studio and finishes with touches of bold, saturated color and stones. Her newest body of work All is Dvash is inspired by flowers and their fruitful presence in nature. These romantic and harmonious pieces represent the happiness and pleasure that flowers bring in her life. “The myriad of shapes and colors [of flowers, with] their undulating, flowing lines, are the source of my inspiration, and have led to my fanciful compositions.”

organic wax work

Her approach to wax comes from a place of wanting to emulate soft organic forms through hard, long-lasting materials. She uses gold as tool to preserve natural materials and forms well beyond their life span. She has found that wax working lends itself well to sculptural dimensional work. The use of wax is “justified” by its role as a useful tool in achieving forms that cannot be achieved solely through working with metal. Wax casting is hardly a shortcut in this process, and in fact could be interpreted as the opposite due to the need for precision while wax working as well as the complicated process of electroforming. Precise and intentional wax-working is key when aiming for organic aesthetic.

Find out more about Ruta’s techniques in working with wax in her Organic Wax Working workshop April 28-30, 2017 at Metalwerx in Waltham, MA.

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