When my Gram died she left me her writing desk. I knew I’d be getting it because the day I was born she stuck a piece of masking tape under it with my name on it. That same day in 1977, Gram received a bracelet with a pendant containing the first photograph of me.

In 2003, while on a road trip, Gram gave me four shoeboxes filled with her jewelry. At the time the gift felt odd but Gram knew I would eventually make good use of her collection. Gram died in 2008. Several years later I opened the shoeboxes.

365 Grams is part documentation and part reclamation. Beginning on July 1, 2016, without fail, I wore one piece of Gram’s jewelry every single day for a year to give the jewels the respect and attention they deserved. After that, the jewelry became raw material and 365 Grams.

Amelia Toelke works across mediums to explore the unique relationship between identity, culture, and ornament. Jewelry is a profound part of being human. As it slips on and off our fingers and passes from one generation to the next, it performs powerful and complex social functions, communicating who we are and who we want to be. In Grab Bag, Toelke presents wearable objects alongside works on paper. Viewed together, charms, chains, and gems are jewelry and symbol simultaneously. The compositions both substitute and transcend the form and function of language, leaving fleeting echoes of exuberance and sentimentality.

“Quilts represent comfort, female strength, family, community, history, pattern, craft, and love. The act of putting needle to cloth makes the fabric stronger with each subsequent stitch. I use this seemingly simple act as a metaphor and a source for inspiration. I imagine the women who made my family’s heirlooms. What were their thoughts, their dreams, and conversations? I contemplate this as I repeat the process.”

This body of work represents the strength and support women offer each other through their making. Utilizing familiar tools associated with traditional female crafts like reclaimed aprons and knitting needles, Angela Caldwell creates wearable and armor-like representations that embody the spirit of women and offer a perspective on the strength they provide. The repetitive use of the archetypal hexagon draws on the imagery and symbolism of a queen bee in her hive. The use of contemporary practices and materials, like powder coating and metallic thread, positions Caldwell’s modern voice within this rich history. By deconstructing and reinterpreting the quilt, she commemorates the women of her past, carrying their emotions and support with her as she faces each day. Blending her experiences with those imagined, she reveals the previous makers' central roles in shaping her female identity.  

Colorful Minds represents contemporary jewelry artists in the United States who use enameling as their primary medium. These artists explore enameling techniques by introducing contemporary interpretations to the historical medium. They express themselves using visual language, reflecting their narratives through  innovative techniques and materials, as well as new technology to experiment and challenge the traditional craft.   

Colorful Minds is an international curatorial project started in 2022 in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, the color of humanity seemed to turn dark and gray as we lost our daily human interactions and so many lives. This project is largely dedicated to contemporary enameling, jewelry, and objects; by featuring bold, whimsical, and colorful enamel, we hope to convey positive energy to those who endured all the difficulties and challenges of the pandemic.   

“I may have many stories to tell. I will choose only a few. You can make up the rest.”

Meet Me presents a new body of work by artist Katja Toporski, work that she has made over the pandemic years, in both her home studio and at residencies in Finland and Norway. This body of work is her most personal yet, a sort of self-portrait: inside, outside, idealized, fictionalized. Through her making, she looked for integration of self and others, the world around her, generations, and the past, with an aim to stay well in chaos and find focus where things fall apart. The artwork is at once an act of reflection and absorption and a portrait of the artist’s spirit.

Throughout history, jewelry has been utilized to visually indicate a wearer’s preferences, characteristics, attitudes, and beliefs. For this year’s community challenge, the BJC invited artists to create jewelry and wearables that implicitly or explicitly act as signifiers, symbols, or classifications. Jewelry might play an overt role as a signal or act as a coded symbol of inclusivity, exclusivity, or social status. The work featured in Signs, Signals, + Symbols references, among other things, political movements, gender and sexual identity, and cultural communication and practices.

Through their collective exhibition projects, the four-person Norwegian artist collective ARKIVET presents contemporary jewelry that reveals their material understanding, craftsmanship and artistic perception. ICE COLD can refer to many things, including temperature, weather, and food or drink. When ARKIVET’s members explore the expression in dialogue with each other, a number of specific interpretations and reflections emerge: tactile and emotional interactions with the cold, an exploration of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a singular experience with extreme cold, and poetic interpretations that address complex and contradictory interpersonal relationships. With the ICE COLD exhibition, ARKIVET presents a collective statement about our present-day and the complex period in which we live.

The ARKIVET Collective is: Putte H. Dal, Ella Heidi Sand, Hilde Dramstad, & Camilla Luihn

In our attempt to categorize, we rush to organize makers into those that make works of art and those that make production work, but rarely are the boundaries so distinct. The One and the Many illustrates the reciprocal relationship between singular works and the production practice of the Baltimore Jewelry Center’s Metal Shop artists. The exhibition asks the viewer to examine the cycles of making, as one type of work leads to another. Does the repetition of production lead to a blossoming of individual works, or is the autonomous artwork inspiration for a market friendly line of pieces? The One and the Many breaks down the hierarchy between these two categories and asks the audience to consider a making practice where production and art are facets of a larger whole.

Fulfillment is an exhibition of jewelry and speculative objects by the Baltimore Jewelry Center’s inaugural Teaching Fellow, Andy Lowrie. While completing his Fellowship at the BJC, Lowrie has been reflecting on his work life in the United States. While this has most recently been as a jewelry and metals instructor, it has also included labor and production roles unrelated to his training; day jobs he took on to support his work as an artist. The experience of teaching a craft and sharing a passion sits in stark contrast to the extreme physical output demanded of American manufacturing and logistics. Fulfillment weaves the influence of these experiences together in an attempt to exorcize the difficult and meditate on the meaningful. The exhibition includes surround sound designed by Baltimore-based composer, Jason Charney.

Transforming the Prototype is a collaborative project developed by the Baltimore Jewelry Center, Montgomery College, and Towson University. Participating artists selected a vintage ring design from a curated group chosen for the project and received a wax version of their selection. Artists then transformed the ring through additive or subtractive processes, either while it was still wax or once it was cast in metal. To transform the prototype into a bespoke object or piece of jewelry, artists integrated new wax components, soldered and sawed their cast pieces, added stones, and, in some cases, built larger-scale objects. The resulting work demonstrates the infinite possibilities of the lost wax casting process while making connections between fine jewelry and conceptual jewelry. Participants from the three educational institutions as well as independent artists submitted nearly 50 transformations that will be on view in this exhibition.

For six weeks, artists Jolynn Santiago and Andy Lowrie will use the BJC gallery as a temporary studio space to create an exhibition that will unfold like a conversation for viewers to witness. Jolynn and Andy share a love of dust and tape, and both utilize mark making, enameling and metalsmithing in their respective practices. They find common ground in drawing and are attracted to how materials break down and wear away. They prefer a methodology of reacting and responding rather than preemptive planning, driven by the process of making and the curiosity inherent in making. Unraveling will not be about a finished product but about challenging what a finished product can be and how an audience comes to see and understand the work of the artist, making visible the ways art and objects come into existence. The exhibition will show how we think through making, recording, reflecting and communicating, and how relationships influence the outcomes of collaborative work.

Language and the written word are integral to our ability to communicate with one another, to share our ideas, thoughts, and feelings, in both an informative and expressive way. We utilize language in very basic ways, but also manipulate it for creative purposes. In the Art Jewelry Forum article article “Tilling Time/Telling Time,” gallerist and writer Karen Lorene says, “Ideas appear, and then words, and then, strangely enough, a novel”; this progression is also mirrored in the work of visual artists. This exhibition showcases work by metalsmiths, jewelers, and artists who use text and language in their work, to visually and literally communicate their ideas, as a method of mark-making, or as an inspiration point. The body serves as a landscape and meeting ground, inviting intimate exchanges of words between the viewer and wearer.

Humanity has adorned itself with jewelry throughout the ages. The earliest acknowledged artifacts date from between 100,000 to 135,000 years ago and indicate that prehistoric humans were thinking symbolically about the objects around them. Historically, jewelry has been used to denote marital or class status, signify availability or fertility, act as protection against evil spirits, enhance beauty, mark grief, convey wealth, and more.

For this community challenge exhibition, we asked artists to make a piece of jewelry or a sculptural object influenced by a historical piece. Artists participating in the challenge drew inspiration from a pre-selected collection of historical jewelry objects from the Walters Art Museum. The items in the collection come from various cultures and time periods, illustrating spectacular craftsmanship and skill.

New Works by Mallory Weston

Chromoflage explores the familiar landscapes of a digital world superimposed on the foliage of rare tropical plant specimens. Coincidentally, these lush species also lead a double life as popular houseplants with a sometimes cult-like following and appeal. How did this happen? Well for one, these striking plants make excellent content, with their splotches of pastel pink or polka dotted patterning or otherworldly solid white leaves. But there’s also the darker and more recent phenomenon of the desire to latch onto any other life form available to tend and care for during the months of isolation that we’re still enduring. The excitement and anticipation of watching a new leaf slowly unfurl or fresh buds appear after a long period of dormancy, something to look forward to during quarantine.

Baltimore and Pittsburgh were both forged in the American Industrial Revolution, producing steel, textiles, and coal. Today both cities are finding their way towards post-industrial futures; health care and education play outsized economic roles in each. Both gritty cities are characterized by a strong neighborhood feeling. Both are mixes of nineteenth-century industrial architecture, dotted with mansions once owned by industrial leaders, such as Hackerman House (Baltimore) and the Frick House (Pittsburgh). Baltimore has its iconic Bromo-Seltzer Tower while Pittsburgh enjoys the Heinz Factory, both elaborate structures from the cities’ manufacturing pasts, now re-purposed. Cities of Steel Cities of Rust is an exhibition conceived and organized by Mary Fissell and Courtney Powell.

The Implement Archive

The Implement Archive is an evolving collaborative exploration of hand tools, utensils and other pieces of equipment used for a particular purpose between visual artists Ellen Kleckner and Linda Tien. Applying an intuitive consideration to the familiar visual vocabulary established by a lineage of makers, through process, and material, the archive calls question to the commonplace or the recognizable through the investigation of form, textures and composition. Through altering familiar materials and forms, the archive acts as a documentation to share the evolution of utility, format, function and maker through the employment of cooperative play and exploration paired with traditional practice and material. The collaboration is not only an example of how traditional materials are combined in a contemporary investigation, but also how two makers negotiate the synthesis of different elements.

What can be seen in the objects we keep? What can be said of the objects we discard? i found you is a solo exhibition of works by Jessica Andersen. To create the work in this exhibition, Jessica sourced materials from estate sales, auctions, garage sales, and junk drawers. Objects found and stories collected; some invented, inherited, or bought. A favorite spoon, a paddle, an old toy. I found you and what new stories do you have to tell?

In United, artist Shani Richards asks can a person take back an offensive/taboo word and make it their own? Richards is fascinated with how people use jewelry, body modifications, shoes, and clothing to convey their race, social status, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and class. She is incensed and inspired by the word N-i-g-g-e-r, and how the black community years ago decided to take the N-word back. United is an exhibition of pendants featuring racial and ethnic slurs, sexual orientations, gender pronouns, and more. Richard’s goal for the exhibition is that by revealing a rainbow of slurs, people will see themselves reflected somewhere in it and maybe gain a greater understanding of the power of the N-word. The art relies on audience participation and conversation. Throughout the exhibition, viewers will be invited to wear the pendant of their choice. Selfies posted on social media are encouraged so the conversation can spread out beyond the community.

Potential Space: new works by Rebekah Frank

Potential Space: new works by Rebekah Frank is the culmination of a one-month Mid-Career Professional residency at the BJC. The work created during the residency is an exploration of graduated chain as a building block to create volumetric forms.The chain creates collapsible shapes, which are flexible and changeable as they are worn. The structures are minimal, spacious, without complexity. Despite the geometry and material, they are not hard pieces. Softness enters the pieces as they drape and conform to the environment they interact with, the gentle pull of gravity, the planar surfaces of a table, the curves of the body. There is a delicacy in the line and in the structure, but these flexible perimeters create their own spaces, capturing a moment within their curves and edges. These potential spaces are a place for further investigation.

a solo exhibition by jewelry artist Kristin Beeler

Kristin’ Beeler’s practice includes contemporary jewelry that focuses on stories told by the skin. Archive of Rag and Bone is iterative, multi-media portraiture drawn from the repair marks of traumatic scarring, currently of eight subjects. Beeler’s intention is that the work will lead audiences to complex conversations about compassion. Within the exhibition, narratives are told through photographs, embroidered Tyvek garments, book folios in vellum, and dimensional objects in charcoal: materials chosen to contrast polarities. Structures are drawn from local flora, wind maps and charts used for navigating sea currents that cannot be seen, only felt through experience.

Guidelines Volume 2 explores how learning, inspiration, and aesthetic growth takes place outside of a traditional academic environment & is an ongoing process. The Guidelines Project was started in 2019 by artist and curator Brie Flora. As a semi-recent graduate, Brie was interested in exploring how artists find and maintain inspiration. When you are out of college, whether it be an undergraduate or masters program, you are no longer driven by given guidelines. How do you create work? What do you create? In this exhibition artists were asked to look at an older piece of work and remake it, exaggerating and expanding on things that they might want to change.

Computer aided technology is no longer new. Over the past several decades, industry professionals and artists alike have explored and expanded digital technology, developing the tools and materials available to create a visual language built in the virtual sphere. In Handmade Hacking we ask what happens when the maker is interested in using the technology not as an end but as a means to push beyond the software? What happens when the artist moves deftly from handmade to digital and back again, blurring the distinctions between the
methods of making? How many stages or degrees of separation might exist from design to outcome?

Jewelry Edition is a platform for sharing and celebrating contemporary jewelry, started by Kat Cole and Laura Wood in 2012. The project began as a catalyst to provide emerging jewelers more visibility and as a means to explore new ways of sharing this art form with a diverse audience.

One of the most fascinating things about studying mathematics is how something so simple, like a line, can become increasingly complex and beautiful with just a few shifts in perspective and direction. Reed Fagan’s solo exhibition Space Filling is a visual investigation into an obscure field of mathematics that was pioneered by Giuseppe Peano. Space filling curves prove the idea that something with no width but infinite length could in fact fill a space in a very efficient manner.

On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean are ‘Western’ cultures. If jewelry is considered a form of communication, do people speak the same language on either side of the Atlantic? Site Effects aims to shed a light on two questions: Have these differences been blurred in our era of globalization or do they still exist? To what extent does one only perceive a difference because knowledge of an artist’s name and location results in cultural stereotyping?

In psychology, object permanence refers to the understanding that objects continue to exist independent of ourselves, even when they are not able to be perceived. Within that construct, an object may evolve and change, from whole to broken, lost to found, or even exist simultaneously as more than one thing. The material reality of the object might be different than what is expected or visually understood. In Object Permanence we ask how does our perception of an object change as we observe and study it? And how does our perception of the object inform the truth of the object itself?

In Proposed Excavation, a solo exhibition by Demi Thomloudis, systems, colors, forms and marks are observed and excavated from the built environment and reorganized in a new system to now inhabit the space on the body as ornament. Roles have been reversed. Now, instead of our bodies moving in and around the space, the language of these spaces occupies the intimate landscape of the body. Thomloudis intends to challenge the construct of jewelry as a means to examine value, material sign systems and extensions of identity through the lens of place. Her jewelry is a means to connect us closer to the world we are surrounded by.