Monday, May 27, 2013

LOLA BROOKS


Lola Brooks is an artist, metalsmith, clotheshorse and sometimes writer who studied fashion at Pratt Institute but quickly found herself drawn to the metals studio and the possibilities that the intimate scale of jewelry presented.  Deciding to pursue jewelry full-time she went on to earn her BFA in metals from SUNY New Paltz in upstate New York.

Fascinated by jewelry as a cultural signifier, she is influenced by historical jewels, which were often imbued with meaning far beyond the mere physicality of the object, finding inspiration in the Victorian obsession with death and sentimentality, the Arts and Crafts movement, as well as the American art jewelry movement that came into being following World War II when artists once again resurrected an appreciation of the handmade and rejected principles of mass production.  She is driven by her never-ending search for the rich variety of strange and beautiful materials she collects and her love of making beautiful things by hand. She is obsessed with diamonds.  Each piece of her jewelry is fabricated by hand or carved in wax and cast, and stones may be hand-cut, all of which keeps production limited and each piece unique.  She believes there is a certain kind of power to be found in objects that are cultivated in exactly this way.

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