Madeover: The Radical Jewelry Makeover Artist Project!
Madeover: The Radical Jewelry Makeover Artist Project! features 25 artists from across the U.S. and abroad. This jewelry collective has been exploring Radical Jewelry Makeover’s (RJM) core values since 2014, by creating a broader series of works. The resulting Madeover jewelry is exciting, fresh, and 100% recycled or reused, and provides innovative examples of how to work with previously donated unwanted and cast-off jewelry.
Represented artists include Curtis Arima, Julia Barello, Erica Bello, Angela Bubash, Raissa Bump, Melissa Cameron, Jim Charles, Kat Cole, Gabriel Craig and Amy Weiks, Jack da Silva, Marilyn da Silva, Sarah Holden, Yevegnia Kaganovich, Kathleen Kennedy, Taylor Zarkades King, Deb Lozier, Chelsea Nanfelt-Rowe, Sarah Parker, Suzanne Pugh, Caitie Sellers, Jina Seo, Rachelle Thiewes, Stephanie Voegele, Adam Whitney, and April Wood.
Radical Jewelry Makeover is an international traveling community mining and jewelry recycling project that is both performance and event, linking recycling, reuse, and collaborative work sessions with the creation of innovative jewelry. The project creates a transparent circular supply chain that starts at donors’ jewelry boxes, asking community members to mine their collections and donate their old unwanted jewelry. Jewelers work as refiners and designers, transforming the donations into new Madeover pieces of jewelry, using environmental and human health as primary design criteria. Receiving roughly 100lbs of unwanted jewelry at each installment begs the question, “is there really a need for newly mined material?” RJM lays bare the social and environmental destruction of mining, inspiring artists to shift their practices towards sustainable solutions, and asking communities to radically alter their habits of consumption.
Radical Jewelry Makeover fundamentally trusts and relies on community participation in order to function. Through collaboration and connection, RJM has built an international network of artists and donors committed to changing the way we make jewelry and source materials. Madeover jewelry is the vehicle to spread the story of the need for transparency and circularity within the jewelry field. RJM jewelry invites conversation, questions and attention, helping to broaden the reach of the project. Because of its uniqueness and geographic reach through institutional partnerships, RJM has the potential to truly impact how jewelry is made and where its materials are sourced.
Please join directors and curators Susie Ganch and Kathleen Kennedy for an opening reception at Bario Neal on November 17 from 6-8pm.