Metalsmithing
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Browsing Metalsmithing by Subject "jewelry"
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access Emily Andersen Arends: capstone(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Andersen Arends, Emily, artistThe artist's statement: Every women's body tells a unique story: the stages of her life, the tasks her body has undertaken, and the wonders of its many shapes and forms. Wrinkles tell the story of the past. There is a beauty in how the events of our lives are displayed on the canvas of our skin. Through my work, women are open to be proud of the smooth skin of their youth as well as the wrinkled skin of their future. A woman's body changes after the vessel of her womb has been filled and emptied. Also, the stages of aging manipulate the shapes of her form. In my work, vessels that are worn or stand-alone enforce the idea and metaphor of containment. These vessels are meant to give an internal and external aspect of invited interaction. There is a desire and a privilege of knowing and experiencing what is inside. From the vessel of the womb, to the wrinkles and shapes of the female body, I have explored and celebrated what it is to be a woman through my eyes.Item Open Access Emily Yodis: capstone(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Yodis, Emily, artistThe artist's statement: Every 7 years the body turns over every cell essentially creating a whole new body, a new person who looks, feels and acts differently. I am a completely different woman than I was at even 16 years old. In my life I have had a tumultuous relationship with my body and the concept of sex; specifically, intimacy and pleasure. I view this collection of work as a reclamation of bodily autonomy and understanding, helping me find love for a new body that has never seen such harsh criticism. Safety, comfort, ownership, reclamation, understanding, overcoming are all processes that I work through in life, but also within my metalwork. Mental power, sexual power, and physical strength/integrity are concepts I embed in the physical creations I produce. My jewelry is directly connected to the location of the body on which the piece is worn. It is in conversation with my ceramic work, which also references the body, but in an abject style. These vessels give the viewer an uneasy, uncomfortable, and even disgusted reaction. Social constructs about how some parts of the body are seen as beautiful while others (and sometimes even the same parts) are seen as disgusting fascinate me. I explore these ideas in my piece "The Beauty of Something Unbeautiful", in which I contrast couture-style jewelry with the less glamorous location of the foot. Femininity, sex from the female perspective, and stigma about attention and the act of "showing off" also interest me. My piece "Spineless" engages these themes through taking the central structure of the human body and displaying it in a more vulnerable position on the naked human back. The consistent theme within most of my metalwork is the reclamation of my own body. Growing up as a woman there was tons of pressure to fit the ideal body type, even though the ideal body type has changed so much just in the 23 years I have been alive. Making amends with my body has empowered me to finally accept not necessarily what I look like, but the idea that my body is a vessel that contains who I really am. This reconciliation has brought me peace and happiness, and helps ground my artmaking process. Finally coming to terms and accepting my physical form has been one of the most prominent struggles in my womanhood. Many women have gone through similar experiences as I. For me, the most important part of healing is channeling my experiences into the physical manifestation of objects that are both vulnerable and strong.Item Open Access Jaden Scott: capstone(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Scott, Jaden, artistThe artist's statement: Memories are invaluable to me. They are passed from person to person, generation to generation, friend to friend, and will outlive what they remember. Sharing these memories through storytelling, artifacts, hidden meanings, and manifested abstract ideas are the goals of my work. Being able to show a deeply personal experience from the inside and share it outwardly is at the root of my expression of memories. I create to hold onto family, friends, past and future versions of myself, and my own challenges I faced in small physical fragments. My work is a collection of personal souvenirs. My personal souvenirs are all rooted in narratives: being diagnosed with an incurable disease, past and future versions of myself, my background in dance, my exploration of gender, and, most prominently: my heritage. My grandparents were farmers and lived on a multi-acre farm, their work ethic and overall way of life heavily inspire my work and the narratives I tell. It is important for me to take these experiences and transform them into work, through which I take the time to reflect on them and myself during the process. In my metals practices, I focus on non-jewlery ways to adorn the body that add meaning to the work itself. The location at which something is placed on the body is very important to me as a way of describing the feeling inside and showing what that manifests from that outside. Examples of this include medical images of different areas of my abdomen and recreating them to be worn in their same locations on the outside or trying to describe the abstract feeling of love and memory and placing it over the heart. I focus on the body itself and how the forms and feelings inside the body can be depicted exteriorly. By creating work that dives into deeply personal stories, I am able to dissect the impacts certain events had on me and process them through my work. Taking multiple hours to go through the process of creating a piece allows me time to sit with the ideas and events, and come out the other side a little bit wiser. There is a lot of nuance in the choices I make during my process and I can spend hours detailing the entire story and reasoning in each piece I make. It is my goal to share my narratives, my love for the craft, and myself through my works.Item Open Access Jamie Hettinger: capstone(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Hettinger, Jamie, artistThe artist's statement: My recent artwork reflects the stresses I feel personally about my own home and my resistance to live peacefully within it. As a result of this, I began thinking about what makes an ideal woman and where I belong in this ideal. External dictates of what is beautiful, what is appropriate, and what is needed to be successful or loved, fuels my passion for this work. My pieces expose the oppressive nature of domestic life and my response to these pressures through the use of materials from the domestic sphere that are often seen as weak and easily manipulated. Within this work, I explore the strength in fragility and transparency that is natural to these materials: plastic wrap, paraffin, thread, pins. Each material reacts differently to the stress of heat and pressure: the molten metal must be carefully watched, wax quickly melts and runs away, the plastic wrap clings and forms into itself. These reactions seem a sign of weakness, until the final forms emerge as unexpected realities standing strong as newly empowered objects. This new power, contrasted with the fragility of the materials, creates a push/pull dynamic. The viewer may be drawn in, but the way in which these pieces are made create between the viewer and the audience. The space in which you can move into is limited, yet still communicative of the perceived boundaries that are set upon feminine culture and the intentions of possession. Through reshaping and recontextualizing these materials, new emotions are wrought. Texture, color, and surface become important in expressing multiple moments in each object's making and origin. When a material with the purpose of preservation is manipulated, a piece of interest is formed. Similarly, when a woman's idea of self is altered, her interests can transform. Only you can dictate what is beautiful to you, what is appropriate for you, what is success and whether you are loved.Item Open Access Syd Hanna: capstone(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Hanna, Syd, artistThe artist's statement: My relationship with my body has never been good. Growing up, I knew I was different from my peers. I didn't know what to call it or how to express it so for most of my life I pushed those negative feelings down and out of my mind. Through my art practice, I began creating things that led me towards the changes I desperately needed to make. My current work continuously points me in the way of the body; more specifically, the one I have resented for so long. Through my work, I explore these feelings of fear and confusion surrounding my gender identity. I reveal normally hidden spaces on my body to commemorate my struggle to find myself. I elevate these private spaces as a celebration of my journey, transforming the darkness that has held on to me for so long into something of immense value, both precious and beautiful. The relationship between the human body and art has been explored for centuries, and my work focuses on pushing that exploration to highlight my transgender experience. I channel the pain and uncertainty into something beautiful that accentuates my body in a unique way. The delicate textures of my hands and the curves and lines that cradle them, remind me to hold myself closely and gently in times of uncertainty and stress.