Unusual 'Display of Gestures'

For metalsmith artist Jennifer Crupi, the term 'meaningless gestures' is, well, probably meaningless.

Crupi creates her conceptual metalwork to model and reveal human gesture and its close relative, body language.

Indeed, during the 20 years of exhibiting her art, Crupi's shows have increasingly included the word 'gesture' in their title. The big difference in 'Jennifer Crupi: A Display of Gestures' is this show will be her first on the West Coast in a career based in New York and New Jersey.

The exhibition, which features approximately 15 of Crupi's handcrafted works of art made from sterling silver and aluminum, runs June 28 through Oct. 5 at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco.

"The Museum continually has an eye on the unconventional," says executive director Joann Edwards, who's excited about bringing Crupi's unusual vision westward. "We love the opportunity to engage creatives and our audience by presenting forward-looking exhibitions."

Crupi's style of wearable art may be forward-looking, but some of it also looks positively medieval.

"Jennifer's work, in general, speaks to meaningful gestures, as the wearer or viewer interacts with it," says Edwards. "It is intended to visually demonstrate how we communicate with one another through movement, body language, and choice of object for wearing."

In addition to the 15 handcrafted pieces, the show will include framed displays and Plexiglas-encased photos, etchings, and narratives prepared by the artist, who is a professor at Kean University in Jersey.

Crupi's work is part of the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Oregon, and the Samuel Dorskey Museum of Art in New York.

For more information on the exhibition, click here. For more on Crupi, click here.