Artist's Statement
My jewelry designs go beyond mere adornment. My aim is to create jewelry that combines the beauty of nature and human beings while finding the power within.
My design aesthetics are characterized by a sense of delicacy, humor, and a focus on botanical elements including the aspect of danger. Using mostly sustainable materials, I seek to be responsible for the planet in my practice. My pieces are all handcrafted using recycled metal and resin clay, resulting in a unique combination of hard and soft textures that reinforce the contrast between nature and human-made materials. The plant structures I create are intricate and finely detailed, adding a touch of whimsy to the work while also emphasizing the fragility and beauty of the natural world.
Creating jewelry is a spiritual journey that begins with nature itself. Each piece is crafted with intention and attention to detail, and my work will encourage wearers to connect with the natural world and find their own inner strength. Ultimately, I see jewelry as a form of self-expression that can empower individuals to bravely explore both oneself’s inside and outside.
Ethical Statement
As a jewelry major student, dealing with all kinds of gemstones and metal has become a usual thing. Whenever there is a new project incoming, we tend to buy a lot of raw materials and end up not using them all, or there would be messed up sample pieces being put aside. Therefore, a lot of scrap metals would be produced every day from the studios, and from my research, the scrap metal if not correctly disposed of can be very hazardous to the environment. Meanwhile, the procedure of recycling usually requires a huge amount of scraps, which is more efficient for industrial metal wastes. When there is consumption, there would be more waste, and several studies show that the environmental crisis is near. As a future designer, being sustainable and responsible for the blue planet’s future is crucial, and it is okay to use old/recycled materials.
I would never keep wasting the materials I have on hand and buy more new things for new projects, instead, I would try to figure out a way to utilize the clean metals I have left first properly. I understand that there would always be metal wastes that cannot be utilized and the causes cannot be avoided. To make up for that, I would pay more attention to other types of material waste when creating artwork. The article about ways for artists to solve the plastic crisis has provided me with some ideas about how to execute more ethical practices when it comes to art. When someone is purchasing a piece of my work and asked how sustainable it was, I would prove to them with documentation of my bench waste and how scrap metal is recycled from my practice.
Through that, I hope people that are not artists can also realize the importance of recycling. For instance, I reused an enameling technical piece and assembled it with some other materials at home and made it into a small statue which fulfilled the goal of sustainability. In the jewelry field, there are already pioneers who are leading the crowd to realize the importance of social responsibilities as artists, such as Ute Decker, Ash Hilton, and so on. I believe that in the artist community, if everyone could try to utilize the material that has been ignored or is going to be thrown out and properly dispose of the waste, the goal of building a sustainable and healthier environment can be achieved. One person may not make a huge change but hundreds of thousands of people can, even if each’s sustainable and ethical action is small, it will still be combined into a great shield for our earth.
A thought on Concerning Plants: Connections
The idea of nature is widely applied in all kinds of art forms. At the end of the 19th century during the Art Nouveau period, nature became the main source of artistic research and inspiration while the studies about nature progressed and a lot of new organisms were observed, the interest in nature deepens when the public was educated about the environment and organisms.
However, from my research, on a higher level of cognition, the majority’s interest in nature only stops around its beautyness. Compared with other organisms in nature, human beings are considered to be full of emotions, intelligence and on the top of the food chain. That passes a sense of ignorance sometimes, which means that we might tend to ignore the creatures living below the pyramid and easily take advantage of them. Other living creatures which are in the lower part of the pyramid like plants, are widely interpreted as lower-level creatures that might not have sensory intelligence and feelings. In recent decades, many scientists have proved through experiments that plants are not simple life forms, they might share common characteristics with humans.
My inspiration actually came from a story about one of those experiments. One day in February 1966, Cleve Backster, a CIA Interrogation specialist, inadvertently attached polygraph electrodes to the leaves of a cowslip and poured water on its roots. As the water was absorbed, he was amazed to find that: on the reading, the results were similar to those of people who are excited and happy. He then tried to threaten it. As soon as he fetched a match and just ignited it, the pointer of the recorder swung violently, showing very strong fear. Scientists are increasingly fascinated by a range of new discoveries about plants’ emotional phenomena, such as happiness, anger, sadness, and joy.
Maybe there is more left to know about plants? The discovery just started.
As a person who enjoys exploring nature and studying biology topics, some certain traits of plants deeply attracts me. They are the main component of the environment and their contribution to keep nature balanced cannot be ignored. If plants are indeed rich in emotions, then we want to pay more respect to them, and to be concerned about them in a more humane way. I found it very interesting to compare the plants with us, knowing the fact that they can sense and feel, and they might share more common features with us beyond that- makes me want to build a connector between all kinds of possible connections humans and the plants share. To me, finding the similarities between humans and plants from various aspects(physical, emotional, sensual, objective features, imagined characteristics) and turning these into physical form(Jewelry) is one of the keys to connection. I would like to make this unlimited and put more thinking towards what we can discover from plants, and explore that through jewelry. For example, the mimosa leaves sense the outside stimulation and would close the leaves, and I read that as a sense of “shame/shyness”. Another example could be seeing the seasonal changes through the colors of the leaves, and I read that as a feature of observation, vision, and judgment. However, nothing is definite. Different people have different aspects, so it is also widely encouraged that people can observe more and define the little things they see in nature + from my jewelry works by themselves. By choosing the wearing form of the jewelry pieces, I want the body to become the whiteboard that supports those meanings from this plant-themed jewelry while using various kinds of materials, and exploring how we can play around with the connections. Therefore, my thesis topic was “Concerning Plants (Botanical): Connections”, depicting the idea of “think more about plants vs us”, while never stopping the steps of discovery.