In 2014, a small group of artists from across the country were invited to dive more deeply into the motivations and questions of Radical Jewelry Makeover. These artists, who were all past participants of RJM, were asked to create a series of work using donated jewelry left over from previous donation drives. We asked them to consider a series of questions while making their pieces:

• How have you been influenced by the project?
• How do you weigh what techniques and materials you will use?
• How are creative license, personal safety, environment, and social responsibility factored in to your choices?
• How do you anticipate future uses for the materials that you are using?
• Will a jeweler in the future be able to reuse your piece by disassembling or melting down the metal?

This portion of the website shares the artists’ brainstorming and decision-making before, during, and after completion of the work. Through the Artist Project (as we affectionately call this off-shoot), we hope to encourage an honest conversation about the difficulties facing jewelers who are trying to employ wise studio practices that cause little harm to both the environment and human health.

The Artist Project continues to travel across the country. Recent exhibitions include the Baltimore Jewelry Center in Baltimore, MD, Form and Concept Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, and the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA.

In 2019, a new group of artists was invited to join the RJM Artist Project: Erica Bello, Jim Charles, Yevgeniya Kaganovich, Taylor King, Chelsea Nanfelt-Rowe, Jina Seo, and April Wood. We are dedicated to representing work that highlights unique and viable ways to incorporate reuse materials into different facets of the jewelry industry.