Special trunk show at The Island Gallery

Published 1:30 pm Friday, February 2, 2018

The Island Gallery presents a special trunk show, just in time for Valentine’s Day: The remarkable work of jeweler Agnes Seebass, presented by Michelle Tange of Gitana Fine Silver.

A reception is 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 2.

Trained in Germany, France and Mexico, Seebass celebrates and honors three cultures with her jewelry while maintaining a cohesive, sophisticated style and design.

Seebass was born in 1966 in Berlin, West Germany. She says that from the time she was a young child she “loved working with her hands,” and had a natural inclination for the arts. In 1985, she studied architecture in the HHS-Architecture Bureau in Bremen, and in 1986 went to Toulouse, France, where she studied Architecture and French at the Université du Mirail. Between 1987 and 1991 Seebass studied Jewelry Design and Techniques of Production at the Staatliche Zeichenakademie in Hanau, Germany.

Around this time, while in Frankfurt, she was exposed to Mexican modern and folk art and desired to learn more about Mexican culture, especially the fabrication of metal in Taxco. In 1992 Seebass had the good fortune to be awarded a scholarship from the institution Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft to study silversmithing at the Los Castillo workshop in Taxco.

Later, she began creating her own pieces and opened her own workshop, first in Taxco and then in Cuernavaca.

She now lives and works in Austin, Texas.

Seebass points out that while her jewelry designs were significantly enriched by the hollow-ware techniques she learned at Los Castillo, and by the styles and techniques of earlier Mexican silversmiths whose interpretations of pre-Columbian motifs define much of their work, she is a modernist whose designs only subtly reflect this influence.

For more information, call 206-780-9500 or visit www.theislandgallery.net.