Alluvial Deposits (after Carboplatin chemotherapy) My friend with size 12 fingers insists on platinum so I set to work carving wedding ring from wax block refining the crude hacks of my handsaw with a file and a multitude of sandpapers….
Hold me as I land I’m sure you understand … Now we’re on solid ground I find it was quicksand … I had to give myself away So the wind can teach me what to do again —Seinabo Sey, “Hold…
Out/Loud investigates shared visual language in the queer community through the lens of adornment. The artists in this series are multidisciplinary and varied, exploring queerness, gender, and identity and interpreting adornment broadly through surface embellishments, color palettes, and engaging the…
How do I begin again? Through the enduring COVID-19 pandemic—as recurrent promises of an ending are broken—perhaps we’ve each asked ourselves this question several times. It is a question I began asking in the fall of 2019; I’d finished a…
Metalsmith invited the members of Colectiva Tilde to share their own work and a selection from an artist they admire. Colectiva Tilde was formed virtually in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic. We are currently four Spanish-speaking artists…
Nestled between South Korea, China, and the Philippines is a small but vibrant island called Taiwan. I grew up in this country on a steady diet of bubble tea, beef noodle soup, and exquisite subtropical fruit. I also grew up…
On October 8, 2021, Stephen Yusko’s solo show, The Way Things Go, opened in the Sculpture Center in Cleveland’s University Circle neighborhood. The curated collection included a tiny chapel, one that would fit perfectly in a miniature town situated around…
If you could choose a second career that wasn’t in the jewelry and metals field, what would you choose and why? AMY: Baker (of bread, mostly). There are a lot of variables that can go wrong with just flour, water,…
This is Metalsmith’s third essay in a multipart series celebrating artists whose practices illustrate jewelry thinking. These artists may or may not have a background in jewelry, but their work exhibits qualities that jewelry artists will recognize, including commitment to…
In her book, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Susan Stewart describes a secret world that reveals itself when one engages with the miniature: “This is the daydream of the microscope: the daydream of…
When artist Aya Ito first moved to Thailand from Japan in 2006, she did not speak the language. Eager to connect with others, she found herself instead using onomatopoeia, or words like crackle, buzz, and smack that are derived from…
Cole is Ghanaian-British and based in London. Her work is bold and life-giving; her path is as inspired by Ghanaian folklore as it is by naturally occurring life and destruction. Her jewelry is experimental and unique, bold and sensuous, traditional and modern.
Against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement and the rising surge of organized white supremacy, the time to evaluate the impact of racism on Black American jewelry and metals artists is past due. I conducted interviews with and surveyed artists, educators, gallerists, and curators over a six-month period in 2020.
Like a moth to a flame, I find myself dazzled by beadwork. The attraction is not simply its sparkle and color; it is the innate human impulse for the process that spans continents and millennia; the malleability of the material, its painstaking production, and its relationship to individual and collective identity.