MIAMI BEACH, FL.- John Hardy Jewelry CEO, Damien Dernoncourt, Head Designer and Creative Director, Guy Bedarida, President, Mindy Grimes and Lehmann Maupin Gallery Partners, Rachel Lehmann and David Maupin, joined W Magazine’s Stefano Tonchi and Armand Limnander in hosting a cocktail party in honor of celebrated artist Teresita Fernandez. The event, held on Tuesday, November 29th at the New World Center building’s Rooftop Garden in Miami Beach, celebrated Fernández’ appointment to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and her recent artist residency at the John Hardy compound in Bali.

The first artist to participate in the luxury jewelry brand’s Artist Residency Program, Fernández recently returned from a month-long visit to John Hardy’s 100% sustainable compound in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. While there, Fernández worked with Bedarida and his team of local artisans to explore new ideas and techniques and incorporate recycled silver into her studio practice. The trip inspired a stunning work, entitled Silver Screen/30 Dissolves, 2011, comprised of 30 intaglio etchings on metal, displayed in a calendar-grid, each corresponding to the different phases of the waxing and waning moon over a month’s time.

Fernandez says of the project, “During my John Hardy Residency, I wanted to incorporate the silver not just as a physical material but also to look at it conceptually. I researched and developed ideas that dealt with the historical connection between silver and the moon and the way the lunar calendar is presently used in Bali. The moon has, since ancient times, always been a source of fascination, and the associations with femininity, imagination, memory, changeability, moods, imagery, power and intelligence are endless. I took thousands of photographs of nocturnal images shot indirectly on surfaces of high-polished, convex forms made of the recycled hammered silvered that John Hardy uses for much of their jewelry. The final piece is a conceptual layering of silver image over silver surface. Each changing, mirror-like image also reflects light and becomes illuminated, indirectly borrowing atmospheric light in the same way that the moon borrows light from the sun. The images will inevitably change over time, darkening like a slow dissolve as the metal begins to change color.”

TERESITA FERNÁNDEZ
Teresita Fernández was born in 1968 in Miami, Florida. Fernández is a conceptual artist best known for her prominent public sculptures and unconventional use of materials. Fernández’s work is characterized by an interest in perception and the psychology of looking. Her experiential, large-scale works are often inspired by landscape and natural phenomena as well as diverse historical and cultural references.

She is a 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and has received many prestigious awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, an American Academy in Rome Affiliated Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Artist’s Grant. Fernández’s large-scale commissions include a recent site-specific work titled “Blind Blue Landscape” at the renowned Bennesee Art site in Naoshima, Japan. She is the youngest artist commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum for the recently opened Olympic Sculpture Park where her permanently installed work Seattle Cloud Cover allows visitors to walk under a covered skyway while viewing the city’s skyline through optically shifting multicolored glass.

Ms. Fernández’s works are included in many prominent collections and have been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth, TX, the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Italy, and The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo in Malaga, Spain, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Fernández is currently on the board of Artpace, a non-profit, international artist’s residency program. In September 2011, President Obama appointed Fernández to the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts. She received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and her BFA from Florida International University. Teresita Fernández lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

JOHN HARDY
John Hardy is a luxury handmade jewelry brand, founded in Bali in 1989. The company’s collaboration between designers and artisans yields jewelry that unites the mastery of the talented jewelers who served Balinese kings with modern design interpretations.
 
In 2007, John Hardy retired and sold the company to Damien Dernoncourt (now CEO) and Guy Bedarida (Creative Director & Head Designer). Together, they have expanded the brand worldwide while adhering to strict policy of "greener every day" - the belief that a business can prosper with respect to the people, while preserving nature and the environment.

John Hardy collections are sold widely around the U.S. in high-end department stores such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. John Hardy Collections are also available in Hong Kong (Lane Crawford), United Kingdom (Harrods and Net-a-Porter), Japan (Isetan), France (Le Bon Marche) and other countries worldwide. In December 2010, John Hardy opened its first flagship boutique in Jakarta, Indonesia at the prestigious Plaza Indonesia shopping mall.