STATEMENT OF PURPOSE - risd/careers

ITALY
BFA JEWELRY + METALSMITHING 2011 – DESIGN PROPOSAL
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
Past and Present: Italian Contemporary Jewelry as Art
My current work is perpetually informed by the past given my technique and material choice. This confluence is
unavoidable. I consider myself both a jeweler/metalsmith and an artist; thus I am invested in the challenge of bringing
together traditional application and conceptual artistic validity. Many assume that art practices rooted in tradition are
incapable of meeting the demands of contemporary culture. The convergence of jewelry adornment and contemporary
art is specifically problematic due to jewelry’s artisanal history. In the United States this clash is especially evident.
Italy in comparison, throughout its long artistic lineage, has proven the traditional past and the art’s present can coexist.
This project would allow me to explore the role jewelry and metalsmithing plays in the contemporary and fine art
world by utilizing Italy as a model.
My project includes formal study with diverse educational institutions, practicing art professionals, and contemporary
art galleries, framed by deep, theoretical questions. What makes an object contemporary? If jewelry is so deeply mired
in tradition, in what ways can tradition simultaneously be contemporary? There are many historical examples where
Italian artists have successfully represented this dichotomy; Bramante’s Tempietto, Rosso Fiorentino’s mannerist
paintings, Borromini’s San Carlo, il Colosseo Quadrato, and Italian goldsmithing of the 1960’s, for instance. Part of my
research will address the ways these works satisfied the demands of innovation. What made them individually
transcend time and tradition uniquely? Can connections be drawn between the examples? What can we learn from them
today? For the first three months of my Fulbright year, I will be in Rome working with four main affiliations to guide
the observational, research, and extraction based components of my project. Laura Barreca, art critic and curator, will
serve as my main advisor. She currently works for the highly anticipated and newly opened MAXXI- Museo nazionale
delle arti del XXI secolo, Italy’s first national contemporary art museum. Her formal education in contemporary art
preservation, knowledge of Italian art history, and interest in maintaining cultural heritage will help me establish a
connection between the past and the present. Ms. Barreca will recommend pertinent literature and sites to visit locally,
and address general topics of contemporary art and Italian art patronage within historical traditions to guide my
research.
A secondary affiliate will be Cornelia Lauf, art historian, writer, and curator specializing in both contemporary art and
design. My time with Ms. Lauf will be more focused given curatorial experience with contemporary jewelry, her
extensive library of modern European art books (many specifically on Italian goldsmiths and jewelry artists), and her
interest in the relationship between art and artisanship. We plan to hold discussions on topics that address the
fundamental ideas of my project, such as the value of craft in a post-postmodern art era.
Throughout my study with Ms. Barreca and Ms. Lauf, I will have library access privileges at the American Academy in
Rome, which houses a rich collection of volumes on Italian goldsmithing throughout the centuries, to better understand
the discipline’s lineage. This research will be supplemented by consistent study of ancient and classical Italian art
themes. I will also work with the contemporary art gallery Il Ponte Contemporanea to familiarize myself with Rome’s
flourishing contemporary art community and current international trends valued in Italy. I hope to explore the methods
by which art is curated and exhibited in a space. I will initiate discussions addressing whether jewelry plays a role in
contemporary curatorial practice, and if not, why?
After three months, my goal is to have investigated relationships, extracted connections, and collected a visual
vocabulary from which to develop. Next, I will attempt to formalize my new understanding through execution and
collaboration. Beginning January 2012, I will attend Le Arti Orafe, Contemporary Jewelry School and Academy in
Florence. Giampaolo Babetto, with whom I interned last summer, is the school’s artistic director and one of the first
jewelry artists to initiate the contextual shift of goldsmithing in Italy from tradition to the avant-garde.
Building on my previous training at RISD, I will enroll in technical and traditional Italian jewelry classes, including
stone-setting and engraving, for six months. The school has already evaluated my capabilities so I will immediately be
immersed in a community of young artists with similar technical and conceptual competence. The pursuit of a

traditional education bolsters my initial goal to be educated by the past, however it is imperative to note that the Le Arti
Orafe emphasizes a conceptual and modern education as well. My own work will deal with this duality. I plan to
synthesize the traditions of the past with contemporary idioms to create modern objects that speak to both worlds. Will
my work be about the struggle goldsmithing has faced to legitimize itself as a valid form of art? Is the use of traditional
techniques in innovative ways possible? If so, is it enough to contemporize the work?
At Le Arti Orafe I will also work with Maria Cristina Bergesio, a traditional and contemporary jewelry expert and
exhibition curator. With her help, I will further synthesize my studies and begin to think about jewelry’s existing place
in the art gallery. This education will be supplemented by frequent trips to Padua, where Babetto was raised and
educated, to visit contemporary jewelry galleries. I will also visit Florence’s Museo degli Argenti, which showcases an
extensive collection of historical Italian jewels and contemporary goldwork. My intent is to question conventions of
display that take jewelry out of its intended context. Is there a more appropriate way jewelry artists can showcase their
work than the typical glass case? Can the viewer be invited to a new level of interaction?
Although not yet an official affiliate, I have been in contact with Opera Rebis, a unique organization promoting art
projects that emphasize partnership between young Italian and international artists. Opera Rebis is associated with
another distinguished contemporary jewelry school in Florence, Alchimia. My hope is to unite the students of Le Arti
Orafe, Alchimia and other young artists—to organize a jewelry exhibition that displays the conceptual and artistic
nature of our work in a way that is apt and expressive. My past work at RISD, where I cofounded the school’s first
student-run gallery, along with my collective experience thus far in Italy will make this a significant synthesis of my
new ideas. The collaborative initiative will attempt to redefine the ways in which jewelry is shown—to push artistic
approachability and expose our work to other art communities. If we believe jewelry is art and art can be jewelry, this
event will have to manifest this idea. I want to create a new environment where history can meet innovation, the present
can respect the past, and tradition can become contemporary.
PERSONAL STATEMENT
Past and Present: Italian Contemporary Jewelry as Art
I am sitting with my classmates listening to the director of Providence’s Jewelry Museum talk about the history of
jewelry in America. While he speaks passionately of the trade, he makes frequent reference to industry—my first
indication that we are on somewhat different pages. He speaks of jewelry in America’s short history in terms of a
mass-market, and seems largely interested in innovative manufacturing trends. I have realized my resistance to this
commercial mindset prior to this talk, but the distaste that he sparks in my artistic mind reaffirms my opposition.
I turn my thoughts to Italy, were cultural ideals more closely relate to my values. I recall on a specific moment of my
previous summer’s internship, where I spent two glorious weeks in the Italian countryside working for a man I can’t
help but call my hero, Giampaolo Babetto. Babetto has a different soul than the man in front of me today. He embodies
ideals exactly opposite to American trends in jewelry production; he values the unique hand-made object.
I remember sitting across from Babetto in his studio on the second day of my two-week internship, sweating profusely.
Was it the intolerable humidity of a hot July or my nerves that
caused this reaction? Babetto had offered to help me fabricate a ring I had designed with his own work as inspiration. I
was sawing circles out of a large sheet of silver that would have cost me an arm and a leg. I was surprised to find the
routine task so incredibly difficult when performing it in front of a master… surely if I broke a saw blade this man
would consider me a novice, undeserving to benefit from his decades of expertise and artistry!
I had to channel his energy somehow. What better distraction than to think of Babetto’s own artistic influence on
jewelry, goldsmithing to be precise, a practice so deeply rooted in Italian cultural history. Babetto is the second
generation of the Padua School, a globally recognized lineage of jewelers that since the 1960’s have contributed to the
conceptual repurposing of their discipline. This man showed the international jewelry community and the
encompassing world of fine art that contemporary jewelry innovation could manifest in traditional techniques. Being
“contemporary” no longer required high-production rates, easy assemblage, or unconventional materials like plastic.
As I thought of Babetto’s legacy, I relaxed my shoulders and took a deep breath. I remembered I was using his tools,
extensions of his own hands. His mastery of material somehow managed to calm me, and I continued to saw without

eaking a single blade. Life has a funny way of piecing together seemingly unrelated experiences. Looking back now
I realize my time with Babetto harmonized the last twenty years of my cultural, artistic, and family life. From a young
age my father’s incessant need for carbonara, a good Tuscan red, and a love for Caravaggio led my family on frequent
trips to Italy made possible by my mother’s job as a flight attendant. I too was first drawn to Italy’s beauty, history, and
endless amounts of prosciutto, but I had no idea my own artistic journey would pull me back so intimately.
I tune in again to our lecturer. I know his paradigm is hard to transcend in an American context, but I also know I am
already among a small community whose beliefs and ambitions align with mine. We see that jewelry can be more than
commercial production, fashion trends, or handicraft—it possesses an intimacy of scale and a relationship to the body;
it is a means for social engagement and a messenger from past to present. I believe these potentials have already been
duly embraced in Italy. My goal is to immerse myself in this culture to better understand the feelings, the influences,
and the history that made this artistic growth in jewelry possible.