From Painting to Inlay Jewelry: Gym Series to Rock Solid Bodies
Deep Squat Spot, 60 x 60 in., oil on canvas, 2019
Before getting into making inlay jewelry, I was an oil painter. My last series of oil paintings was my Gym Series, where I was interested in emphasizing the strangeness of what it’s like to reside in a physical body as well as the peculiarity of certain exercises and the awkward or compromising positions they put people in—instead of idealizing them.
At the time, the gym really was a hot spot for conversations around gender issues, body politics, competition and the propaganda of progress and my goal was to engage in these ideas through gentle, empathetic humor, not satire.
After finishing grad school and doing some soul-searching about where I was headed next, I felt like making huge paintings didn’t align with my spirit. Instead, I wanted to make small, intimately-scaled art pieces while also finding a way to combine my love of rockhounding and painting.
This led to me learning how to make inlay jewelry and creating my own techniques for “cobblestone inlay,” where each stone is cut and domed separately to create a more interesting texture.
I took my gym paintings a step further and played with the absurdity of having a “rock solid’ gym body by making figurative forms out of semi-precious stones inlaid in sterling silver with my Rock Solid Bodies Collection. These works depicted vibrant figures running, squatting, stretching or arching their—literal—rock-hard bodies. Despite the playfulness of these pieces, I wanted to keep fostering empowerment, independence, and resilience in women.
You can see more from my Rock Solid Bodies series below or here. Send me a message about availability using the contact form at the bottom or here.
