Featured Artist: akajewellery

“Aka jewelry” is a result of two goldsmiths – jewelry designers – Ausra Bankauskaite and Mante Maskoliunaite. We both graduated Vilnius Academy of Arts, Jewelry design faculty in Lithuania, [the country where we originally come from]. Ever since we cannot live without metal. We’ve been working as freelance designers for two years in Lithuania and last year we decided to move to New York City.

We are young and we enjoy that! Everybody should experience as much as possible in their lives. We, travel, party, hitchhike, read, listen to the music, attend new exhibitions, take new challenges witch are sometimes totally illogical.  I could go on and go on, but we really try to enjoy, because life is short, and we have to take the risk, to discover.

We have always admired minimal contemporary art. And strongly agree that less is always more. Maybe it will sound rude, but we don’t try to please our customer by creating what they prefer more.  We think that all jewellery finds its own customer, other wise, if the art would be created according to the trends, the artist wouldn’t be the one who created it.

The creating process has to have some kind of energy source. What gives us that energy?

As we mentioned before, the sparkle is an idea. The passion is to develop the idea. And the result is our jewellery; which always has something hidden underneath.

Why did you choose your career / niche / topic / market?

We think it might be a combination of creativity and love to construct, what made us to choose this profession because ever since I was little I used to construct, or just take apart everything that I could reach and helping dad to fix something was way much fun than playing with a doll. It is kind of funny, because Mante and me met only in Art Academy, but had pretty much the same point of view in jewelry design.

During the studies we both had practice working for other jewelry designers. During the practice we learned actually a lot – how to work fast, save time, do everything perfect and the most important thing – that nothing makes you happier, than creating and working for your self. After graduating Academy we decided to start working together as freelance designers, under “aka jewellery ” name.

What are your goals?

Our plans for the future are very simple. Since we are young jewellery designers, we know how hard it is to find galleries to sell, promote and make exhibitions for your work.  Our goal is to open our own gallery where young artists from around the world wouldn’t be scared to express their selves and show their work to the audience. That their jewellery would find their own customer without any interference from the outside.

We hope we will reach our goal.

How do you describe what you do and why are you doing what you do?

“Aka jewellery” is our way to show who we are and what message we bring to the world.

Aka jewellery – is also known as jewellery. We picked this name because contemporary jewellery is often left behind the contemporary art and sometimes doesn’t belong among jewellery, because it is different.  The difference what we want to make, is to bring more people to appreciate one of the kind contemporary jewellery. Make it affordable and crate a way of wearing a little piece art every day.

Our ideal customer is the person who is confident and believes in him/her self.  Not afraid to take challenges and express him/her self in many different ways.  They affect us by having hunger for new ideas. So we always have to be ready to surprise.

For having fresh view and bringing contemporary jewellery to life

Our customers that believe in our ideas.

Our story is just beginning. We started from idea and now trying to realize it. It was hard to do that in Lithuania, because of economical situation, post soviet mindsets, that makes people afraid to experiment, and many other unpleasant factors. So we decided to take a risk and start everything all over in the country that might give us more opportunities.  We moved to New York without anything just with the same idea.  It is really hard to start from the zero, but we are ambitions and are not used to giving up so easily.  We have our passion to what we do and that is our energy source that keeps us going.

What event or need causes them to search for what you offer? Which problem do you solve?

To find our jewellery, you have to be not afraid to stand out in the crowd. 

What is your message?

If you are looking for ways to express yourself, “aka jewellery” might be the way to share your massage with the world.