The contemporary jewelry field is much less resilient to the use of words and texts than its craft heritage would have us believe. Words help us define our practice and describe (or dress up) our things. In fact, words are what we use to help these things graduate to the status of cultural goods. They are a good tool to both pry out what is special about what we do and to state who we are to the wider public.
In the course of my dual career as a maker and theorist, I have found that I often went further and used writing as a general testing (and crashing) area. I research in books and develop on notepads, which is precisely what this lecture is about—how exactly does one move between the printed page and the bench? Can one be both a maker and a commentator? How much time can I spend at my desk before someone calls the craft police?
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Sponsored by the San Diego State University and Art Jewelry Forum.
