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Rubin Gallery
Monday, June 9th - Saturday, September 27th, 2014
2014 Closing Reception "A Centennial Celebration of the Arts
Friday,September 12th, 2014 Time TBA

Something Gleams is a site-specific retrospective of the artist Rachelle Thiewes that celebrates her work in the context of the place it was made, here, in the starkly beautiful landscape that has informed her decades-long study of light, movement, order and chaos. The exhibition features work from all stages of her career, and highlights the ways in which her jewelry reflects an intimate relationship with the Chihuahuan desert she calls home. In 2014 Thiewes will complete 37 years of teaching in the UTEP Department of Art, where she has provided both artistic and educational leadership to a generation of artists while becoming an international leader in the field of metalsmithing, consistently producing work that has been collected and exhibited around the globe.

"I have always loved the desert.
One sits down on a desert sand dune,sees nothing, hears nothing.
Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams..."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Artist Bio

Thiewes' art is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Museums of Scotland, Victoria & Albert Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Museum of Arts & Design, among others. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Calder Jewelry, The Art of the Book, Jewelery Moves, One of a Kind: American Art Jewelry, The Best in Contemporary Jewelery, Jewelery in Europe and America: New Times New Thinking, American Craft and Metalsmith. In 2009 she was named "Texas Master" by the Houston Center of Contemporary Craft and in 2010 was nominated for a United States Artist Fellowship. Thiewes is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship, the University of Texas Regents Outstanding Award for Teaching, and Distinguished Achievement Awards for Research and Teaching at the University of Texas El Paso where she is a Professor in the Department of Art.