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07/14/2025

Meet the Outstanding Students of 2025

AJF Member Schools Introduce Their Noteworthy Grads

By Art Jewelry Forum

The all-nighters are over! Students in the jewelry programs of AJF member schools have finished their coursework for the year and installed their exhibitions—hurrah!

We asked faculty to identify one outstanding grad or undergrad from their current class
You’ll see their best work in this photo essay
Congratulations to the students who were selected!

These significant new makers represent the next generation of jewelry artists. Keep a close eye on their career trajectories.

Click on the photos to see the photo captions.

This opportunity to show off student work is one of the benefits for AJF member schools (see all the benefits here).

Hellman’s work focuses on how this distance has affected our relationship to animals and food production. She has made extremely conscious ethical considerations while daring to face the risks that are often a prerequisite for artistically important standpoints. In dialogue with a hunter, Hellman forced herself to accept the materials and remains of animals and let them be highly involved in the production of her jewelry. Her professor, Anders Ljungberg, states that through careful handling of these materials, and in dialogue with traditional silversmithing techniques, “she has created the most tender jewelry without in any way escaping the responsibility that comes with handling materials, regardless of whether you are a craft-based artist or wearer of this jewelry.” | Caption: Marianne Hellman, Safe Distance, necklace in bark-tanned wild boar piglet fur, silver, glue, photo: Hanna Klintskär

Choosing jewelry as a method is a way for Hellman to challenge how refined a material can be. “What would you consider placing around your neck?” she asks. “Someone else’s skin? Any kind of skin?” | Caption: Marianne Hellman, 19 Deer, necklace in bark-tanned roe deer ears, waxed linen thread, photo: Hanna Klintskär

Hellman has learned and is preserving craft traditions such as tanning, combining an invaluable passed-on knowledge with new methods. | Caption: Marianne Hellman, Family Fox, necklace in bark-tanned fox ears, silver, glue, photo: Hanna Klintskär

“I see, get to know, and try to understand the world through my hands,” says Hellman. “The exploring and touching of materials give me vital information and expands my impression. To experience tactility is, for me, like reading.” Spending time with the material provides Hellman with respect for, and a relationship with, the source. Being present lets her see and appreciate the wonders of nature. | Caption: Marianne Hellman, A Bit Chewy, brooch in roe deer teeth, glue, photo: Hanna Klintskär

For Hellman, the source of the material is as important as the finished object. “I use the objects as a method to raise a question or highlight a problem,” she states. “In my practice I address questions regarding attitudes toward, and value of, unused animal material. What is waste and what is material? What is waste and what is remains? When is it considered to be refined? Can everything be used? Can it be used for everything?” | Caption: Marianne Hellman, Blow Your Nose, brooch in bark-tanned fallow deer ears, thread, photo: Hanna Klintskär

In this body of work, Hellman investigates her own valuation of different species, as well as the various parts of a nonhuman body. She evaluates her capacity for redefining values. “I see the need to reconnect the material with its source,” she explains, “revealing lost human responsibilities.” | Caption: Marianne Hellman, Meet Sven, necklace in rooster feathers, copper, eggshell porcelain (eggshell, seaweed), photo: Hanna Klintskär

“It is my strong opinion that we need to treasure [lives] once lived and make the most of what we harvest,” states Hellman. “I strive to give my refined material the voice to convey that and let my hands provide wordless jewelry with a language.” | Caption: Marianne Hellman, Can You Hear Me?, necklace in the fat-tanned interior of moose ears, silver, thread, photo: Hanna Klintskär

“[This] soft foam ring engages critically with the nuances of sameness and difference,” states Finck, “drawing on the theoretical proposition that repetition cannot occur without difference. Conceptually, it interrogates the reconfiguration of power structures within new formal and symbolic expressions.” The signet ring is traditionally emblematic of authority and patriarchal dominance. Finck’s rings position themselves as distinct from both historical archetypes and the other rings within the series. Yet each ring “simultaneously affirms and destabilizes this distinction, existing in a state of both alignment and divergence,” states the artist. “This ambiguity extends to its wearer and can be read as a critique of persistent patriarchal structures that have merely altered their outward appearance over time.” | Caption: Svea Finck, LoOKatmE, 2025, rings in foam, photo: artist

This glass necklace is part of a group that also consists of a ring and a brooch. “The work critically examines the reproduction of the female body in Western culture,” says Finck, “drawing on the recurring motif of the Three Graces and the symbolic decapitation of the head in art history. By referencing these canonical representations, the work highlights how bodies—and by extension, thought—have been subjected to persistent forms of restriction and control.” | Caption: Svea Finck, ReFLectME, 2025, necklace in glass, copper, thread, model: Rune Vervoort, photo: Saverio Sammartino

“The cage,” explains Finck, “used here as a metaphor for structural constraint, becomes the formative mold within which the delicate glass bodies are blown. Their attempts to expand beyond this framework are integral to their final shape; even once the cage is removed, its imprint remains—visibly and irreversibly shaping their form.” | Caption: Svea Finck, ReFLectME, 2025, ring in glass, copper, model: Jeske Druijts, photo: Saverio Sammartino

Caption: Svea Finck, ReFLectME, 2025, brooch in glass, copper, model: Rune Vervoort, photo: Saverio Sammartino

Finck’s crocheted chains conceptually examine repetitive work in the domestic sphere and the value ascribed to it in comparison to labor performed outside the home. | Caption: Svea Finck, rEpeATMe, 2025, necklace in steel, model: Jeske Druijts, photo: Saverio Sammartino

“The technique of crocheting—often regarded as one of the lowest forms of handcraft—is elevated through its translation into metal, a process that simultaneously questions this very valuation,” states Finck. “The repetition of the work across different metals, each with the same weight and equivalent invested labor time, combined with identical pricing, highlights the varying degrees of worth attributed to the same labor.” | Caption: Svea Finck, rEpeATMe, 2025, necklaces, models: Elisabeth Pira, Rune Vervoort, Jeske Druijts, photo: Saverio Sammartino

This jewelry installation examines the reproduction of the idealized notion of marriage and its association, perpetuated by media and society, with the idea of a “happy ending.” As Finck explains, “it employs the symbol of the engagement ring to critique the societal reproduction of a narrative constructed to uphold patriarchal dominance, which has been propelled to a form of capitalist excess. The piece addresses the attempt to imitate an ideal that neither truly exists nor has ever been adequately defined, revealing the gap between cultural fantasy and reality.” | Caption: Svea Finck, loVemE, 2025, installation in white gold, spinel, putty, photo: artist

Cranbrook Academy of Art is spotlighting Ziqi Yuan, who graduated this year with a master’s degree, as its outstanding student. “I made a bunch of objects. Sometimes they can be worn, sometimes they frame a space, and sometimes they serve as tools to create something else. But beyond these possibilities, I won't forget that they are, above all, simply things that carry my narrative,” she wrote in her artist statement. “Objects complete the parts of memory that words cannot reach. They preserve not only our memories, but also the version of ourselves that lived in them—how we touched, how we gazed, how we longed, and how we lost.” Memories need something solid to hold onto, for they’re as elusive as mist.

“Through this piece,” states Yuan, “I explore how our emotions and memories are quietly preserved within everyday furniture—and how, over time, they begin to fade.” Yuan displayed the work in a closed room to create a sense of isolation. In a contained space, memories are held and suspended. In this context, the furniture is no longer whole. It has lost the essential elements that define it as a functional object. “What remains are fragments,” continues the artist, “remnants that ask us to remember what once was. For me, this act of presenting partial forms becomes a gesture of mourning, a space for reminiscence and quiet reflection. It invites us to consider what we truly value, and what meaning still lingers in what’s left behind. As we encounter these traces, we’re drawn not only to what is visible now, but also to what is absent—imagining what used to be, and wondering if these objects are still waiting for something, or someone.” | Caption: Ziqi Yuan, Bed, 2024, in cotton, cast iron, ceramic, 40 x 75 x 30 inches (102 x 191 x 76 cm), photo: artist

“I've been reflecting on our daily interactions with the objects around us,” says Yuan, “and I find the chair to be one of the most intimate. It's fascinating how chairs quietly capture and document our lives, becoming witnesses to our routines. Over time, we form an emotional connection with them, without even realizing it. In this work, I focus on the parts of the chair that we physically touch, stitching them together layer by layer.” Each layer represents a unit of time, and the thickness reveals how much time has been spent in contact with it. The layers, like memories, accumulate over time, showing the imprint of a presence. | Caption: Ziqi Yuan, Chair, 2024, in cotton, 16 x 53 inches (41 x 135 cm), photo: artist

These ceramic molds begin with a mold taken from a rock. Each new mold is cast from the fired piece of the previous mold, revealing how the ceramic shrinks through firing. States Yuan: “It echoes the memory of my grandma’s body gradually diminishing as I grew up. Just as a rock slowly disappears from the world, I witnessed her shrink in both body and presence in my life.” | Caption: Ziqi Yuan, Her Shrank Being, 2025, in plaster, 38 ½ x 2 ½ x 12 inches (98 x 6 x 30 cm), photo: artist

“I asked my mom and grandma to trace each other’s body outlines onto fabric and send them to me from China to the US,” says Yuan. “Using these shapes, I created works that speak to maternal protection—how care is embodied, passed down, and held across generations. This garment bag is made of my grandma's body shape traced by my mother.” | Caption: Ziqi Yuan, A Mother's Shape 母形, 2025, in cotton, plastic buttons, photo: artist

“Stones are just like us,” states Yuan. “Just as our skin records the passage of time and the marks left by experience, a rock’s surface holds the traces of every touch it has encountered. Each touch—whether added or erased—becomes part of its story, turning it into a diary that can be read through the fingertips. Under its skin lies the space that it’s holding, the space that a stone can claim to own in this world. To honor that presence, I used a thin sheet of silver to gently hammer and capture the texture of a rock and made [it] into rings. It is my way of admiring its history, carrying its memory with my body, and choosing to live alongside it.” | Caption: Ziqi Yuan, Skin, 2024, in silver, cotton thread, 1.4 x 1 x 0.8 inches, 3 ½ x 2 x 1.6 inches, 2 x 1 ½ x 1 inches (36 x 25 x 20 mm, 89 x 51 x 41 mm, 51 x 38 x 25 mm), photo: artist

This work brings together most of the small objects Yuan created during her two years at Cranbrook. “Each object carries a memory,” she says, “and together they form a kind of poetry—where every piece becomes a word, holding a specific moment in time.” | Caption: Ziqi Yuan, Objects, 2023–2025, table 49 x 25 inches (1245 x 64 cm), photo: artist

“I’ve been exploring the relationship between objects and jewelry,” says Yuan, “and I realized that a simple, quick cut can transform an object into a wearable piece—almost desperately so.” | Caption: Ziqi Yuan, Cut, 2024, in cotton, plastic beads, ceramic, wax thread, 3 ½ x 16.7 inches, 1 ¾ x 27 inches (9 x 42 cm, 4 x 69 cm), photo: artist

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