Catch 22 at Schmuck Plus in Pforzheim and at the International Crafts fair IHM in Munich

CATCH 22 - CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

"Whatever you know or ever imagined about student life: forget it. This year‘s graduating class of the Idar-Oberstein gemstones and jewellery campus of Trier University of Applied Sciences found themselves in Joseph Heller‘s Catch-22.Idar-Oberstein is a tough place anyway - in the truest sense of the word. And then Covid-19 cordoned off the last places of entertainment and pleasure, confining the students to their flats and the workshops of the university – where piles of stones were waiting and the diamond saws and drills red-hot from non-stop cutting, the bearings of the grinding wheels screeching for fresh grease. The cleaning staff met hollow-eyed students desperately searching for a quiet moment in the workshop - at 6:00 in the morning. Indeed: the only way not to go insane was to work - whereas the constant work, the city, the gems can drive you exactly there. The symptoms were startlingly similar to Covid: a feverish glow in the eyes, thin layers of sweat on the forehead and desperate whimpers and sobs when tired hands dropped something almost finished. The result of this 2-year Covid madness, however, is an extremely strong generation of jewellery artists who are not devastated but have developed muscles while braving the wild currents of this psychological tsunami In fact they are standing tall and now presenting a range of beautiful, meaningful and wearable contemporary jewellery, showing us that there was, is and always will be a way out: not around it - but straight through...

Our graduates rocked this hard place: a great catch in ‘22!"

Prof. Theo Smeets, Head of Department Gemstones and Jewellery

Participating graduates (2021/2022): Tamia Dellinger M.F.A., Susie Heuberger B.F.A., Mana Jahangard M.F.A., Zekun Jin B.F.A., Nikita Kavryzhkin M.F.A., Biljana Klekachkoska M.F.A., Olga Krysanova B.F.A., Nga Ching Ko M.F.A., Zhixuan Liang M.F.A., Sihui Li B.F.A., Luisa Werner B.F.A., Oscar Wippermann M.F.A.