Model for garden gates

Composed of wire webs embedded with chunks of colored glass, these small dynamic sculptures were Falkenstein’s scaled models for her most famous work: The New Gates of Paradise, a set of doors commissioned by art collector Peggy Guggenheim for her palazzo in Venice. One critic described Falkenstein’s work as “Jackson Pollock in three dimensions,” relating her freeform wire work to gestural abstraction in painting.

Falkenstein often experimented with materials and techniques to make smaller-scaled jewelry. For her jewelry, she continued to explore the connection between matter and space, while also considering how the piece was worn on the body.