The purpose of the Art Jewelry Forum's (AJF) Young Artist Award is to acknowledge promise, innovation, and individuality in the work of an artist who is early in his or her career, and to help advance the career of a promising artist. The award consists of an unrestricted cash award of $7,500.

The competition is open to makers of wearable art jewelry who are 35 years of age or younger at the time of application deadline (Jan. 12, 2020) and who are not currently enrolled in a formal academic degree program or a vocational training program.  Work submitted must have been made within the past two years (between 2017 – 2019) and without supervision; work from BFA / MFA thesis and/or graduation shows may NOT be submitted. Applicants who applied previously for the award must submit new work in the current application; that is, work submitted in a prior AJF Artist Award application may not be resubmitted in the current application.  

Applicants are asked to submit the following:

• Current resume (one page long maximum) – do not include your name on resume
• Artist statement relating to the work submitted (approximately 200 words or less than 1000 characters) – do not include your name on artist statement
• A maximum of ten digital images showing up to eight pieces of work
  • All images submitted as jpegs through CaFe must also be available in high-resolution (300 dpi or higher TIFF file) if your application makes it to the finalist round. The high-resolution images will be used by AJF for print media and promotion. 
  • One of the images must show a piece being worn on the body
  • One of the images must show the back side or underneath side of a piece
  • Each image must include: - title of piece - year produced - dimensions in millimeters - materials - photo credit  – do not include your name in the image caption

Deadline for submission is 11:59 pm, (Mountain Time Zone - same as Denver, Colorado, USA) on January 12, 2020.  Incomplete or late entries will not be accepted.  

Five finalists will be selected from which the winning artist will be chosen.  Jurors for the competition will be: the winner of the 2018 Artist Award, Bifei Cao (China) ; collector Jorunn Veiteberg (Norway); and curator Barbara Paris Gifford (United States).

More information about the award may be found at www.artjewelryforum.org.

Art Jewelry Forum is a nonprofit organization spreading awareness and increasing appreciation of art jewelry worldwide since 1997.  AJF advocates for art jewelry through an ambitious agenda of education, conversation, and financial support.  It commissions critical writing that sets the standard for excellence in the field and publishes www.artjewelryforum.org, an online resource for original content on art jewelry. 

* Instructions on how to format images to CaFE™ specifications can be found at Image Prep. CaFE Technical support available during regular business hours M-F 8:30 - 5:00 PM MST. Email cafe@westaf.org

Application Requirements

Eligibility Criteria