Jade Houben
Designer, 1996, Antwerp
Artist Practice
I am a designer with a love for materials, movement, repetitions, texture patterns and color, and with a big interest in combining designing on the computer with a manual working process.
I use a process of trial and error. Making many experiments, and reflecting on the results, is what drives my work forward.
Most of the times that process starts even before I realize it myself. From the moment I receive some information that inspires me, my thoughts start shaping, turning and building. When I have processed the information and created an idea for a try-out, then I start drawing, on paper and on the computer. I have a very good spatial insight and a vivid imagination, and seeing these first designs in 2D helps me to visualize the shape I will achieve in 3D.
Based on that visualization I work out the design for the first tryout. And start assembling and realizing that tryout. Sometimes is what I imagined quite in line with the reality and sometimes not at all, and that can be so surprisingly interesting and beautiful.
I step back and review my result, evaluate my first tryouts and based on my reviews I start drawing again. I focus on emphasizing the positive qualities that I find in the first 3D tryout and adjust the disturbing or less beautiful parts. I repeat this process of drawing, cutting, assembling and evaluating again and again until I am satisfied with my results.
I like to work on different pieces at the same time and these different processes influence each other. The interesting thing about my work is that I can always go in many different directions and have a lot of possibilities, this means I always have to make decisions for which path I want to take for a given piece. This results in me sometimes not being able to work out a path or possibility immediately. Documenting and classifying all my ideas, drawings and tryouts, from the beginning to the end phase, is therefore extremely important, so that I can always go back, to find a solution or new inspiration.
You’ll find many influences of nature in my work. For me nature is a big inspiration source for my shapes colors and patterns. But I find inspiration in many different places. Including paintings and objects of other artists, books, my surroundings and my own tryouts and “mistakes”. I love to get inspired, but I’ll not let myself be limited by one subject.
Education
2020 MFA, Jewellery Design Gold & Silversmithing, Royal Academy Of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium
2018 BFA, Jewellery Design Gold & Silversmithing, Royal Academy Of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium
Exhibitions
2022 Super Tactility Soft Technology, Texture – Flax & River Lys Museum, Kortrijk, Belgium
2022 DIVA, Work in Progress, Antwerp, Belgium
2021 Connected!, Obsessed, Antwerp, Belgium
2021 Marzee, International Graduateshow 2020, Nijwegen, The Netherlands
2021 Antwerps Talent, Antwerp, Belgium
2020 To Be Antwerp, Hilde Cornelissen, Antwerp, Belgium
2020 We Are The Next Generation, Wonder, Kortrijk, Belgium
2020 MasterExpo, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp Belgium
2020 Meet The Next Generation Of Designers, Salima Thakker, Antwerp, Belgium
2020 Craft The Leather, Lineapelle Leather Fair, Milano, Italy
2019 Graduates Be Trippn’, Munich Jewellery Week, Trippen store, Munich, Germany
2019 An Absurd, Nonsensical And Unexpected Encounter With YKK, London, United Kingdom
2018 Jewellery Graduation Show, Antwerp, Belgium
2017 Een Hoofd Vol Haar, Antwerp, Belgium
2017 Jewellery for… An Vandevorst & Filip Arickx A.F. VANDEVORST, schmuck Munich, Germany
2016 Fairytales, Grand-Hornu Group Exhibition, Mons, Belgium
Press And Publications
2020 https://klimt02.net/events/exhibitions/royal-academy-fine-arts-antwerp-ma-degree-show-2020
2020 Crisis Is Our Territory, Dust Issue #17
2019 Making Matters, Craft The Leather
Jade Houben 