35 Facts About Marjorie Schick

Marjorie Schick was an innovative American jewelry artist and academic who taught art for 50 years.

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

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

Marjorie Schick 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.

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

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

Marjorie Schick first began working in papier-mache 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 Marjorie Schick's experimentation evolved from creating frames of chicken wire, coating them in the pulp mixture and shaping them to form.

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

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

Marjorie Schick produced pieces on wire frames encapsulated with molded pulp to surround the body.

In 1976, Marjorie Schick was contacted by Mary Ann Bransby, a jewelry instructor from Kansas City's University of Missouri, to create jewelry pieces for the school's modern dance troupe.

The dancers used the pieces in innovative ways, putting rings on their toes or a bracelet on their foot, which caused Marjorie Schick to recognize that pieces could be reinterpreted.

Marjorie Schick took courses in ceramics and plastics and experimented with making jewelry from clay, paper, plastic, thread, and combinations of thread and paper.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Marjorie Schick began working with fiber, string and dowel rods, submitting six small pieces to an alternative media exhibit, "Jewelry Redefined: First International Exhibition of Multi-Media Non-Precious Jewellery" hosted by the British Crafts Centre in London in 1982.

Marjorie Schick's stick designs played with the illusions of negative space, with pieces of dowel riveted into pick-up sticks, spirals, and zig-zag shapes, creating a dialogue between the body and the adornment.

Marjorie Schick was the only American to participate in the New Jewelry Movement which swept through England and the Netherlands.

Marjorie Schick began exploring companion pieces, making her jewelry part of paintings, so that when they were not being worn, they could be displayed as artworks.

Marjorie Schick incorporated a whimsical series of teapots into her pieces, that took on the form of bracelets, brooches, or frames around the head and neck which could be shifted and disassembled.

In 1987, Marjorie Schick was one of the featured artists in a traveling exhibit that was shown throughout Virginia called Jewelry Now.

Marjorie Schick continued producing pieces for performance art, such as Collar in 1988, a neck piece six inches thick and 31 inches wide.

Marjorie Schick returned to papier-mache in the 1990s, using different painting techniques.

Marjorie Schick began a series of pieces related to their travels, inspired by the varied color palettes of the differing landscapes.

At times Marjorie Schick used unprimed canvas to allow the light color washes to permeate the fabric, such as in the piece Brick Street, a homage to Pittsburg, Kansas.

Marjorie Schick's work was designed to encompass the body, and rather than ornamental accessories, became "three-dimensional drawings-to-wear".

Marjorie Schick designed Yellow Ladderback Chair in 2001 to evoke the "experience of being in a chair".

Marjorie Schick used color to represent variations in mood, such as shiny metallic paint for Necklace 21 representing the year of her marriage and the addition of blacks, grays and whites to Necklace 29, showing how much more complex her life became after the birth of her son.

In 2000, Marjorie Schick was made a fellow of the American Craft Council and in 2002 was honored by Governor of Kansas, Bill Graves as the state's artist of the year.

Rosolowski was the principal collaborator on a book, Sculpture to Wear: The Jewelry of Marjorie Schick published as a retrospective of Schick's work by Arnoldsche Art Publishers in 2007.

The book was written by ten contributors and covered the trajectory of Marjorie Schick's career, assessing her innovation and impact on the development of the contemporary international jewelry aesthetic.

In 2011, Marjorie Schick's works were exhibited in a show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC and in 2013, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art received 300 pieces of jewelry from the private collection of Lois Boardman which included some of Marjorie Schick's designs.

In 2016, Marjorie Schick stated in an interview with Art Jewelry Forum that her current work involved a series of wood shirts, whose design mimicked the styles of artists including Alexander Calder and Jim Dine.

Marjorie Schick retired from teaching in 2017, after having served 50 years at Pittsburg State University.

Marjorie Schick died from complications of a stroke on December 17,2017, at the Kansas University Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas.

Marjorie Schick's teaching influenced generations of students including metalworkers Janet Lewis, whose works adorn the walls of the Pittsburg Public Library, and Sam Farmer, a 1987 recipient of the Elizabeth B Koch Fellowship from the Kansas Cultural Trust, as well as painter Tera Reed and Native American weaver Margaret Roach Wheeler.