Artist Statement/ About Me
Materialsmithing
Since 2009, I have called my work Materialsmithing: It’s an ongoing search for ideas and feelings about how to communicate what relationships I see or sense between whatever raw materials lie before me. My practice is a hybrid of techniques and Materials common to craft, plus Metalsmithing, the method I most often use to create jewelry objects.
Investigating and combining alternative materials in unexpected ways is an enjoyable process of discovery, experimentation, evaluation and revision. Found and collected raw materials that I have contemplated over, often for quite some time, are a recurring feature in what I make. I enjoy revealing the unseen, unnoticed, unexpected or unknown and I am often happily surprised by what results.
Spending time with my materials to patiently smith the equation of what they want to show, what to make of them and how to fabricate a well-made place for them is a delight, and there is immense artistic satisfaction in finding a way to that solution.
I am happy to work in whatever way the objects at hand lead me to go, and I am most satisfied when I have created jewelry that passes beyond the traditionally expected gemstone and precious metal.
Metal and fiber are the most artistically appealing and visually rewarding of all of my various raw materials and I gravitate toward them enthusiastically and without reservation when creating jewelry works.
Conceptual drawing and planning plus the spontaneity of hands-on process and response to varied materials enables the jewelry objects I make to emerge and evolve as they will, though I cannot easily predict how each day may progress. Combining disparate, cast-off or dismissed materials in new and unified ways is an enjoyable part of my work, and I strive to design objects with the ultimate goal of creating intriguing, well-constructed, lasting and wearable shapes and forms.
As a teaching artist, much of my day-to-day practice is devoted to the creation of instructional artworks and demo materials created with 2D techniques like drawing, painting and collage.
Having the ability to draw is an invaluable asset for all of my work, and I draw to both plan and create preliminary models for 3D work. Drawing in tandem with direct, intuitive response to raw materials is a thoroughly satisfying process. I am very thankful for my drawing skill and the flexibility it provides between concept-led and process-led design. When I fabricate jewelry, drawing consistently helps me find the best way to show what I want my work to say.