Awards
- Bicentennial Medal - 2020
- Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) - 2017
About Randy Long
Randy Long received her B.A. and M.A. from San Diego State University, and her M.F.A. from California State University at Long Beach. She was an assistant professor at Drake University in Iowa before joining IU in 1983. Long serves as a Professor of metalsmithing and jewelry design at the School of Art and Design at Indiana University Bloomington.
Randy is a metalsmith of international recognition with over 300 exhibitions and appearances in 24 books. Early in her career, she garnered important accolades with her metalsmithing including her first place winning "Tuscany Tea Service" at the prestigious Fortunoff Silver Design Competition, the Grand Prize from the American Craft Awards in the category "For the Tabletop," and her inclusion in the important exhibition "Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical" at the American Craft Museum. Long's work in the 1980s was "groundbreaking, sophisticated and impeccably crafted. Her creation of sculptural vessels that utilized the newly rediscovered technique of marriage of metals and drew from her travels abroad pushed the limits of what was being created at the time.
Long's technique integrates traditional metalsmithing skills into contemporary jewelry/metal art. Her expansion of the vocabulary of contemporary metal and art jewelry has been described as "trailblazing." Before most American jewelers had considered combining alternative materials with metal like their European counterparts, Randy Long was carving exquisite marble forms and setting them in gold. These inspirational pieces reflect a deep knowledge of the traditions and history of art while embracing abstraction through fragmentation.
Highly respected in her field, Long has exhibited her work internationally and in dozens of private and public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Art and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum), New York; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Yale University Art Gallery, Museion Kecskemet in Hungary, and the International Ceramic Studio in Hungary. Her exhibition list includes two solo exhibitions at the prestigious Susan Cummins Gallery in California, and participation in over 120 shows and over 100 invitations to speak throughout the United States, as well as dozens of international and traveling shows and lectures. She was recently selected for the Two Hundred Years of Indiana Art: A Cultural Legacy Bicentennial Exhibition at the Indiana State Museum of Indianapolis. Her work has been published many times in premier periodicals such as Metalsmith Magazine, American Craft, and Ornament Magazine, New York Times, Metropolitan Home Magazine, and Connoisseur Magazine. Long's notable books include Humor in Craft (2012); Makers: A History of Studio Craft, Art Jewelry Today (2010); The Compendium Finale of Contemporary Jewelers (2008); and Art Jewelry Today (2003). Professor Long is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Recipient of Craftsman Fellowships and two Indiana Arts Commission Master's Fellowships. In 2007 she was awarded the NICHE Magazine Art Educator of the Year Award, in partial recognition for her establishing the metals program in Indiana University "as one of the leading programs in the nation."