Hundreds Attend the Opening of Professor Dan Shechtman’s Jewelry Exhibition at the Technion: “A Jewel for my Wife”
The exhibition is part of the events of the annual meeting of the Board of Governors
“I’m a frustrated auto mechanic, which is why I turned to making jewelry”, says Prof. Shechtman. “I understood the materials from which I was making the jewelry better than my teacher, Audrey Crey, did, but she knew art better than I did. She taught me that esthetics is not an exact science. Jewelry is created with love and feeling, slowly and patiently. This was in 1972, in Dayton, Ohio. Zippi, my wife, was busy in the evenings studying for a Master’s Degree in Sociology, and I, a postdoctoral fellow, found myself studying stone polishing in the arts center during my free evening hours”.
Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said that the meeting of the Board of Governors will be held with a focus on the Technion’s cornerstone centennial and “today we just might have laid the cornerstone to a Technion faculty of arts”.
“The artistic creation itself is integrated and encompassed within the knowledge Prof. Shechtman already possesses”, says Anat Har-Gil, curator of the exhibition. “He works with metal as a routine since he is a metallurgist by trade. He understands metal well, and it is as clay in his hands, to shape and create his jewels as he wishes. The enamel is sealed, at times melting in his hands to transparency. The metal expands and contracts. Enamel, metal and stone merge in a melting pot of matter and spirit. Scientific thinking has a severity in it. It is that which he clings to. It is where he draws the form from. And yet at the same time, the making of jewelry is an excuse for him to escape it, a reason to loosen his grip on the laboratory. The thought is now visual and it begs to raise awareness of latent by existing legitimacy. Professional knowledge is translated into plastic values, and the true occurrence is the transformation of sketches and technical ability into a product of beauty. And behind it all is the moment, the story. A jewel as an expression of emotion, in its own sake. Or to mark an event, perhaps. The process is fed, fertilized, and observed by an ‘audience’ that is but one woman. His wife. Zippi. When this journey comes to an end, it is not yet completed. It is then that a ceremony begins, authentic, modest. The jewel is presented to her as a surprise. Since although she was present even before it was made, she was not party to its making”.
The exhibition presents 15 jewels and is open to the public throughout the days on which the meeting of the Board of Governors is held, June 10-14, 2012, 10:00-16:00, on the 4th floor of the Ullman Teaching Center.
Above (right to left): the curator Anat Har-Gil, Technion President Professor Peretz Lavie, Prof. Dan Shechtman and his wife, Prof. Zippi Shechtman. Photo: Yossi Shrem, Technion Spokesman