German-born artist Iris Eichenberg received her training as a jewelry artist at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After her graduation−with a series of work for which she was awarded the 1994 Gerrit Rietveld Prize, she taught in the jewelry department for several years, to become Head of Department in 2000. In 2007, she additionally accepted a position as Artist-in-Residence/Head of the Metals Department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and moved permanently to the US a year later.
Eichenberg’s work, extending from directly body-related objects and jewelry to multiples, serial work, and installations, has been shown at numerous galleries and shows, and has been collected by many museums, including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Mint Museum of Art and Design, Charlotte, North Carolina. An ambassador for her field, Eichenberg travels the world lecturing and teaching workshops at art schools and jewelry programs.
Not necessarily beautiful ornaments, Eichenberg’s works present a unique mode of occasionally disconcerting beauty. Mixing high-tech processes with traditional forms of craft, some of her series explore the interdependence of the senses, blurring the boundaries between body and adornment, to feature the object as experience. Others use archetypical objects and familiar forms, to give expression to profound and intense feelings.