Cara Lee Croninger (1939-2019)
New York City, NY
Cara Croninger: Sculptor/Jeweler( 1939 - 2019) Welcome to the vintage and production work of Sculptor/Jeweler active from the 1970s-2019.
MessageCara Croninger: Sculptor/Jeweler 1939-2019
Welcome to the vintage and production work of Sculptor/Jeweler Cara Croninger. Cara was active from the 1970s until 2019.
Although no longer with us, Cara remains an icon, a magic woman, and beloved in the fashion and art worlds. She was copied, envied, but most importantly, loved by all who met her or her sensual, innovative work.
Each piece is handmade and finished and uniquely beautiful. Cara’s work has been shown and collected in museums, including Boston’s MFA, MAD in NYC, and the Aspen Art Museum. During her heyday with Rober Lee Morris’s Artwear gallery, her work was used in hundreds of fashion editorials and worn by the supermodels and celebs of the day. Her papers were recently accepted in the Archive of American Art at the Smithsonian. To own a piece of Cara’s work is not simply adding to your fashion collection but to your art collection.
CARA CRONINGER Jan 8.1939 - Mar 21. 2019 Sculptor/Jeweler
Cara Croninger was an influential artist and designer known for using polyester resin and acrylic in sculpture and jewelry. Cara was active from the 1970s until her death in March 2019. Cara’s work earned her the reputation of being an innovator and shaman, while her pieces were modern yet organic, with an incredible color palette and weighty sensual feel. Her sculpture and jewelry have been exhibited in galleries, museums, and stores throughout the U.S., Europe, and Japan.
1939, Cara was born in rural Grand Rapids, Michigan, the youngest of seven siblings. After high school, the artist moved to Chicago, dating a Clancey Brother and making ends meet by posing for artists and waiting tables. In the early 1960s, Cara moved to the West Village in New York City, where the artist crossed the "color line," falling in love with Black actor Otis Young. Eventually, Cara found herself in the unenviable position of single motherhood with two bi-racial daughters to raise. At twenty-three, after a dramatic restaurant firing, the young mom began selling self-made hand-stitched leather bags and Obi belts, saying farewell to service work forever. Throughout her professional life, Cara homesteaded work/live studios in Little Italy, Tribeca, Brooklyn, and, in her later years, Garnerville, New York. Her work/live history mirrors the story of artists unknowingly leading real estate developers to the waters of soon-to-be elite spaces made inaccessible to those pioneering artists.
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The beauty and storytelling of indigenous, African, and Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetics deeply inspired Cara. While primarily doing leather work and silk painting, early in her career, Croninger met a fellow Clocktower artist who worked in polyester resin, and she began her foray into plastics, developing a color palette, making silicone molds, and doing ‘pours’ which were the base for her sculpture and jewelry. Her work was produced using hand tools like the hammer and chisel to an enormous industrial water-filtered glass sander. Shape, contour, and texture were paramount to the developing artist. ‘Each piece is unique and completely handmade. The process of resin involves pouring the liquid resin into molded forms, which cures to a resilient hardness. It is shaped and polished to varying degrees of texture and finish. The hours of labor that go into each piece is the equivalent of fine metal jewelry, if not more.’ Robert Lee Morris.
In 1975, Cara participated in the ‘Artist Make Toys’ at PS1 MoMA, exhibiting her Racer Bulb sculptures.
Before this, Croninger was invited by Joan Sonnabend to join the Sculpture To Wear gallery/store in New York’s Plaza Hotel, showing her first accessories made of resin. In this tiny magical space, Croninger would meet seminal jewelry designer Robert Lee Morris, who later invited her to be part of the Artwear Gallery in Soho. Robert would become a friend, confidant, and champion of Cara’s work and career, introducing her to Kansai Yamamoto and Geoffrey Beene. Robert helped spur Cara’s love affair with Japan. Japanese design, art, and the ‘Wabi Sabi’ esthetic deepened when she accessorized fashion shows for Kansai Yamamoto and Issey Miyake. Cara’s art installations included a restaurant project in Tokyo where she installed large, flat, multi-colored disks on the dining room walls. Cara’s love of Japanese arts included Karate, where Cara achieved brown belt status studying at the Kishi Dojo in Soho. She traveled often to Japan for fashion, karate, art, and love. Photos show Cara’s sheer joy when in Nippon.
The Artwear period was when Cara, Robert, and a handful of the most outstanding artists, including Ted Meuling and Patricia Von Musulin, entered rock star status, their work gracing the covers and editorial stories of Vogue, Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Elle, and more. The gallery was active from the late 70s to the early 90s, a potent chapter in New York City's cultural history. It was the height of the New York Pop Art Scene: Studio 54, blue chip art galleries, hip-hop, rock stars, art stars, and supermodels ruled.
Collectors recognized Cara’s mastery of shaping simple resin into precious, luminous, valuable jewels and that she was in the vanguard of the artist as a jeweler movement. Cara’s work was known for its bolts of unique, vivid color never before possible with enamel or Bakelite. The abstract sculptural shapes of her pieces developed into carefully designed compositions that celebrate the creative force of nature to become contemporary artifacts are still responded to on a visceral, intuitive level.
Cara's classic trademark jewels include chunky bead necklaces, amulets, her beloved heart pendants, bullseye cuffs, drop and slice earrings. Cara’s strong shapes also emerge in her metal collections.
Her sculptures include large rectangle wonders dubbed Talking Stones that reach as high as eight feet tall, ‘Fish’ wall hangings—the Bowls, ‘Racer-bulbs,’ Fetishes, and Shards.
Publications:
Artwear Book-Human Sculptures, by Robert Lee Morris with photos by Klaus Laubmayer, 1985 Jewels of Fantasy: Costume Jewelry of the 20th Century, by Deanna Farnetti Cera, 1992 Collectible Beads, Robert Liu-Ornament Magazine 1995 One of A Kind, American Art Jewelry Today, by Susan Lewin 1994 History of Beads, by Lois Sherr Dubin 1995 Dictionnaire International du BIJOU, Ed., Marguerite De Cerval 1998
Acquisitions:
Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian: Papers 2023 MAD, NYC - Large clear tooth necklace
MFA-Boston: Daphne Farago Collection - Striped C Cuff Bangle 2006 MFA-Boston: Barbara Krakow Collection - 1 Bangle, 3 Pendants, 1 Collar 2007
Awards:
National Prix De Cachet, the award for Design, sponsored by Prince Matchabelli Fragrance 1980
Professorships
Penland School of Design, North Carolina, Studio Course 1988 Parsons School of Design, New York City, NY Studio Course 1983-1987
Collaborations:
Geoffery Beene
Bloom 21, Tokyo, Japan Cedilla Marley
Issey Miyake
Kansai Yamamoto
Exhibitions & Reps:
‘The Store’ - Aspen Art Museum - Aspen, CO Art Gallery ISETAN, Shinjuku Tokyo, Japan Body Sculpture Gallery, Boston, MA
Newport Harbor Museum, Newport CA
PS1 MoMA, NY ‘Artists Make Toys’ Artwear, NYC, NY Solo & Group Shows Julie Artisans Gallery, New York
Harkus Krakow Gallery, Boston MA Koghei Restaurant, Tokyo, Japan
If Soho, New York
Ten Thousand Things, New York Maxfield - Los Angeles, CA Bloom21-Tokyo, Japan
Sculpture To Wear, New York, NY Sculpture To Wear, Los Angeles, CA Velvet Da Vinchi- San Fransico, CA Studio Hop, Providence, RI
Ayse Taki Gallery Istanbul, Turkey
Group show
Solo show 1992
Solo show 1992 Group show 1992 Group show 1975
1979-1992 1973-2013
Installation
Residencies/Studios:
Garnerville Arts Center, Rockland County, New York 2010-2019 68 Jay Street, DUMBO Brooklyn, New York 2000-2010 GOWANUS Foundry-Brooklyn New York 1995-2000 The Clock Tower-New York 1973-1976 173 Duane Street-New York 1970-1980
2020 - 2021 Cara Croninger https://www.instagram.com/cara_croninger/ contact:[email protected]
All artwork and accessory design by:
Cara Croninger 1939-2019
copyright©caracroninger/works2023
https://www.instagram.com/cara_croninger/
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