The fourth installment of our series moderated by Luci Jockel and Emily Jockel.
Part Four features artists Ada Chen, Kate Connell, and Michelle Hisae Nakata-Murray for a provocative discussion about the value of collections, tackling questions like: what are the systems that shape our understanding of value? how do artists create value? is there a balance between monetary value and sentimental value?
Ada is an artist and jeweler who creates work based on her experience as a Chinese American woman and is exploring anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, abolitionist themes. She hates bananas, loves noodles, and is proud of everyone for living life to the best of their abilities.
Kate is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in San Francisco. Her studio practice focuses on small sculpture, especially earrings. She works with a variety of media: wood, eggshells, beer packaging, as well as toys and metals. She and Oscar Melara collaborate as Book & Wheel, producing social practice art projects that invite play, welcome tenderness, and resist gentrification. Connell is a long-time librarian.
Michelle is a California-born, Northwest Connecticut-based jeweler and artist. She launched her collection, M. Hisae Jewelry, in 2016. Michelle's practice centers around the transformative power of beauty, lessons in nature, and exploring the known and lost parts of her ancestry through the medium of jewelry.
Emily is a registered architect, ceramist, and writer based in New York City. Her expertise lies in architecture for artists. Most recently, she converted a historic mill in Catskill, New York into Foreland, a 50,000 s.f. Contemporary Arts Center. Her creative approach is inspired by the inherent structure, geometry, and rationality of a raw material. Emily’s ceramic and writing work explores the female body as raw material and vessel. Emily holds a Masters in Architecture from Columbia University and most recently was an invited resident artist at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
Luci is an artist located in Baltimore, MD and holds the position as Metalsmithing and Jewelry Lecturer/Coordinator at Towson University. Luci received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2016. She has been honored with the 2019 American Craft Council Emerging Voices Award. Luci has exhibited nationally and internationally, including NYCJW 2019, The Procession with MJ Tyson at R & Company. Her work is in the collections of RISD Museum, ArtYard, and Galerie Marzee. She maintains a studio practice as a part of the JV Collective and is represented by Gallery Loupe.