Age 30 • Lives Shaker Heights • Creates Seville, Ohio • Learned BFA in jewelry and metals from Cleveland Institute of Art
By Amanda Koehn
In Ariella Har-Even’s world, jewelry is an interactive bridge connecting one’s body and spirit to the physical world.
As wearable art, it can connect historical beautification and modern life, showing patterns that both reflect on and add to one’s human experience, emotions and thoughts, she explains.
“That idea of using history or using anthropology, things like that, to investigate what it is that really is at the core of who we are,” she says, “it’s something that I do a lot. I really focus on … this idea that the power of jewelry kind of lies within its inability to be disconnected from the body itself.”
A native of Jerusalem, Har-Even’s path to becoming a jewelry and metals artist was wholly unexpected. As an alternate service to Israel’s mandatory military service for young adults, she worked with children with severe disabilities. She thought she would stick with that field, calling it “one of the most amazing and incredible jobs I’ve ever had.”
Her work being physically and emotionally demanding, she sought something creative to do for herself in her free time. Someone suggested trying jewelry making.
“And honestly, as cheesy as it sounds, the first time in the studio, the first time holding a torch and sawing metal, I was really hooked for life,” she says. “So it kind of changed my entire life.”
Her father and his family are from Cleveland, and at the time she had relatives here, which made choosing to study at the Cleveland Institute of Art a relatively easy decision – especially after she saw work by alumni, she says.
As opposed to fine jewelry, Har-Even focuses on art jewelry, or “things that are not designed necessarily for an everyday wearing experience, but rather using jewelry to communicate a larger concept,” she says.
One ideology Har-Even works within is the Jungian psychology concept of archetypes, or symbols or patterns that originate from our collective unconscious. Fascinated by a course on the subject she took at CIA, she connects her work to the theory of human thought and behavior.
“When I’m working archetypally kind of means that … I aim to highlight the connective tissue between historical adornment and our contemporary 21st century life, kind of using jewelry to find those patterns and focus on the human emotion, the human experience, human thought process,” she says.
Working out of a studio in Seville, Ohio, she stayed local after graduating from CIA with her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2019. In addition to her personal artistic practice, she works in the library at the Cleveland Museum of Art and co-founded an educational initiative called Commence Jewelry, which supports and highlights work of recent graduates in the jewelry and metalsmithing field.
One challenge thus far in her career has been trusting herself and skill set, she says. And graduating less than a year before the COVID-19 pandemic, adaptation has been key. At the same time, she’s says she’s fortunate to have had opportunities to connect with others in the field.
In November 2019, she attended her first New York City Jewelry Week, referring to it as “one of the most transformative events” in terms of meeting new people in the art jewelry field beyond her alma mater.
“That’s kind of another reason why I felt so strongly about starting and running Commence – to help other people in a similar place in their own practices feel connected,” she says.
Fittingly, at this year’s NYC Jewelry Week – which took place through Nov. 21 – she was recognized as an honoree for its 2021 One for the Future platform, recognizing emerging talent in the field.
Commence Jewelry is also the official educational partner of NYC Jewelry Week and hosted an exhibition featuring work of recent graduates at the event.
In addition to the NYC Jewelry Week honor, she was also awarded a graduating scholarship for travel from CIA, for which seniors from all different majors compete. And last year she was part of an international enameling exhibition through the Enamel Guild North East, in which she won a first place juror award.
“I was just overwhelmed to be included in the exhibition with other professional artists, and so then to actually be chosen for the top juror award meant a lot,” she says.
Building more and more confidence in her skills and connections, she’s starting to explore ideas that are more deeply personal. An area she’s become interested in involves the archetype of death. Focusing on funerary rituals and adornment, she’s researching their connection to memory, legacy and specifically victims of the Holocaust.
“I’m the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors,” she says, adding that after surviving the Holocaust, her grandparents, Frank and Edith Ross, settled in Cleveland. “… It’s a slightly new direction for me just because this work is much more personal.”
“Adornment has been a constant in human development and Ariella shows how jewelry as an archetype connects not only people to one another but to spiritual and psychological concepts. Her consummate research continues to provide seeds for the innovation of her ideas. Ariella is an individual who is advancing the importance of wearable art within our culture by focusing on the human experience.”
– Kathy Buszkiewicz, professor of jewelry and metals, Cleveland Institute of Art
