Marjorie Schick

Marjorie Schick (August 29, 1941 – December 17, 2017) was an innovative American jewelry artist and academic who taught art for 50 years.

Approaching sculptural creations, her avant-garde pieces have been widely collected.

Her works form part of the permanent collections of many of the world's leading art museums, including the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City; the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania; and the Victoria and Albert Museum of London.

Growing up in the Heartland of the United States, Schick was raised by her single mother, who as an art instructor nurtured her creative talent.

After attending the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she completed a master's degree in fine art at Indiana University Bloomington.

She then moved to Kansas, shortly thereafter beginning a lifetime association with Pittsburg State University, where she taught as an art professor.

In addition to her teaching, Schick developed a worldwide reputation as a jewelry artist, creating works which were more like body sculptures than traditional jewelry.

Her conception of pieces allowed her work to be displayed on the body while simultaneously interacting with it, rather than simply being worn as an adornment.

Marjorie Ann Krask was born on August 29, 1941, in Taylorville, Illinois, to Eleanor (née Curtin) and Edward P. Krask.

Following her parents' divorce before her second birthday, she was raised by her mother, rarely seeing her father.

Depending on where her mother was teaching or where she attended school, they moved frequently.

At various times, they lived in Normal, Illinois; Blue Mound, Illinois; Charleston, Illinois, where Krask began first grade; Decatur, Illinois, where she finished elementary school; Longmont, Colorado, where she attended junior high; and then Evanston, Illinois, where Krask graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1959.

In Longmont, her mother, who was an art instructor, introduced her to metalworking and in high school, Krask studied fashion design with Frank Tresise.

She spent her summers studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, initially wanting to design clothing, before deciding to become an art instructor herself.

Enrolling in the art department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Krask practice taught in Watertown and studied jewelry design under Arthur Vierthaler, as part of her studies.

As one of the innovators who moved jewelry craftsmanship away from metals in the 1960s, she experimented with a wide variety of materials, including papier-mâché, wooden dowels, rubber, string, and canvas.

Her large-scale works were typically brightly colored and represented a modernist abstract aesthetic.

Upon her graduation, in 1963, she married James Baldwin McDonald Schick.

Together they moved to Bloomington, Indiana, to finish their studies at Indiana University.

She enrolled in a Master of Fine Arts program under the tutelage of Alma Eikerman, who would become her lifelong mentor and a strong influence on her work.

She was trained as a traditional metalsmith and jeweller, graduating with distinction in 1966.

Near the end of her schooling, an article she read about the work of abstract sculptor, David Smith, became influential for her work.

She began to conceptualize jewelry as a type of sculpture which could be worn.

When the couple graduated they began their teaching careers at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, with her husband teaching in the history department while she taught art.

Schick first began working in papier-mâché during the time in Lawrence, using it as a lightweight alternative to metal, allowing her to create larger pieces.

At the time, the medium was unconventional, and Schick's experimentation evolved from creating frames of chicken wire, coating them in the pulp mixture and shaping them to form.

While her traditional jewelry pieces were readily accepted for juried exhibits, her papier-mâché adornments were regularly rejected as too radical.

In 1967, both of the Schicks were hired by Pittsburg State University, at the time known as Kansas State College at Pittsburg.

In 1969, she went back to the idea of putting her body through one of the sculptures of David Smith.

Instead of the flat two-dimensional pieces she had made up to that time, she molded a brass headpiece with tubes on which she welded blue-lensed glasses at eye-level.

Nicknaming the piece Blue Eyes, Head Sculpture changed the focus of her work from metalwork jewelry to wearable sculpture.

Schick became part of the Modernist era, creating works which explored abstraction through line, mass, space and volume.

She took account of the difference between experiencing an object based on its presentation and the materials used, and its aesthetic significance.

Her early jewelry designs were expressionistic, evoking emotions of conflict and contact.

They made use of silver wire mixed with melted and pitted brass or bronze twisted into shapes.

Many of them had the feel of objet trouvé artifacts.

The pieces of her Cycladic Series featured polished shapes of brass and copper designed as oversized bracelets, brooches, and necklaces.

For a time, she believed her metalwork was "serious art" and her experimentation with other media, far less important.

Thanks to its lightweight, pliable qualities, she experimented with papier-mâché, as a means of extending forms away from the body.

It also allowed volume and color to be used in ways that traditional metalwork could not.