September 20th, Of the Moment: Denise Wallace

Alternately powerful or whimsical, Denise Wallace’s jewelry displays a technical mastery of her materials as well as an exquisite eye to detail.
Wallace began making jewelry in the late 1970’s while a student at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, NM, and worked alongside her husband Samuel until his death in 2010. Their jewelry is in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego.
She uses a wide variety of materials, from gold and silver to sugilite, but is perhaps best known for her exquisitely detailed scrimshaw carvings on fossilized walrus ivory. Often incorporating imagery inspired by her Chugach Aleut heritage, her work focuses on themes of transformation, represented in her jewelry by the doors that frequently appear in her work.

Shiprock Santa Fe is pleased to offer this unprecedented selection of work by Denise and Samuel Wallace.