In 2015 I was honored to have received a Society of North America Goldsmiths Mid-Career Scholarship. This unique new award was created to give goldsmiths an opportunity to participate in a workshop supporting professional development.

The opportunity I selected as the focus of my scholarship was a 1-month juried artist residency program at the Banff Center for the Arts. This structured and well-supported program allowed concentrated time to investigate the notion of how pattern affects form, and make a new body of experimental work. At Banff I chose to work on a different scale, with different materials as a way to challenge my jewelry practice. In my studio at Banff I fabricated new 3D forms out of cardboard, and used the printmaking facilities to create a sort of “backdrop”. The early camoufleurs had done similar quasi-scientific experiments to test the efficacy of their Dazzle patterning on ships. New colorways were applied to the three-dimensional objects and finally the objects/backdrops were photographed in different tableau situations. The resulting photographs flattened the 3-dimensional works back into 2D, and these served as starting points for a new body of jewelry work.

A series of objects and paintings were created. The intention of this process is to eventually develop a new jewelry series.