Misread My Lips: Appreciating Ambiguity in Contemporary Jewelry
Presentation proposal for SNAG NEXUS 2017
Sidelong glances, second looks, an exchange of intimacies between total strangers: is it a masquerade? Or is it an encounter with contemporary jewelry?
This presentation focuses on the moment in which jewelry separates itself from more stay-put art forms like sculpture and painting, the moment when the jewel and the jeweled go out together into the world. Like a mask or a costume, jewelry both conceals and reveals, each adornment announcing some aspect of the wearer’s private self to the public at large. Even if you don’t go so far as to wear your heart on your sleeve, you may wear your relationship status on a finger, your tax bracket on a wrist, or your religious beliefs on a thin gold chain. As a jewelry-maker, I use my practice to address ideas I can’t otherwise find the words or guts to express; wearing some of these works amounts to making a public confession.
But an element of mystery and confusion is inherent to all masquerades! Is that wedding ring legit? Is that smiley face button ironic? Is that mouth-shaped brooch meant to be be sexy or sentimental? Like all forms of communication, jewelry can be misheard, misunderstood, or willfully ignored.
This used to twist me up in knots. I felt that if my work did not communicate what I’d intended exactly and in every nuance, I’d failed at my job. Thankfully, over the course of many eye-opening encounters I’ve learned that my job is to say what I need to say, then cede the floor so others can have their turn. My reaction to viewers’ reactions has transitioned from an indignant “I didn’t mean that!” to an appreciative “I couldn’t have made that up if I tried.”
My presentation consists of illustrated dramatizations of choice encounters between the public and contemporary jewelry (mine and others’). Starring drag queens, fry cooks, bickering retirees, porn bloggers, and more, these stories will certainly entertain, but always in the service of addressing deeper questions of why we make and why we wear. Both making and wearing are acts of self-exposure; when I wear what I make, I am doubly exposed, doubly vulnerable to judgement, assumptions, and misinterpretation--and these have become my true teachers. As the poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”
This presentation focuses on the moment in which jewelry separates itself from more stay-put art forms like sculpture and painting, the moment when the jewel and the jeweled go out together into the world. Like a mask or a costume, jewelry both conceals and reveals, each adornment announcing some aspect of the wearer’s private self to the public at large. Even if you don’t go so far as to wear your heart on your sleeve, you may wear your relationship status on a finger, your tax bracket on a wrist, or your religious beliefs on a thin gold chain. As a jewelry-maker, I use my practice to address ideas I can’t otherwise find the words or guts to express; wearing some of these works amounts to making a public confession.
But an element of mystery and confusion is inherent to all masquerades! Is that wedding ring legit? Is that smiley face button ironic? Is that mouth-shaped brooch meant to be be sexy or sentimental? Like all forms of communication, jewelry can be misheard, misunderstood, or willfully ignored.
This used to twist me up in knots. I felt that if my work did not communicate what I’d intended exactly and in every nuance, I’d failed at my job. Thankfully, over the course of many eye-opening encounters I’ve learned that my job is to say what I need to say, then cede the floor so others can have their turn. My reaction to viewers’ reactions has transitioned from an indignant “I didn’t mean that!” to an appreciative “I couldn’t have made that up if I tried.”
My presentation consists of illustrated dramatizations of choice encounters between the public and contemporary jewelry (mine and others’). Starring drag queens, fry cooks, bickering retirees, porn bloggers, and more, these stories will certainly entertain, but always in the service of addressing deeper questions of why we make and why we wear. Both making and wearing are acts of self-exposure; when I wear what I make, I am doubly exposed, doubly vulnerable to judgement, assumptions, and misinterpretation--and these have become my true teachers. As the poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”
