Bloom V

Aluminum, acrylic, sterling silver, brass

2.5 x 1.5 x 0.4 in

My work begins at the intersection of identity, material, and process. As a queer, transgender, and disabled artist, I use materials to explore how identities are layered, masked, and revealed. Adornment is both metaphor and material ? simultaneously armor and vulnerability. Disability informs how I create, leading me toward softer materials like aluminum and plastic and echoing the negotiation of disability in daily life. I think about jewelry as accessibility tools, objects that we choose to wear that inform how we move about our lives and how people interact with us. Through each piece, I explore how identity is relational ? formed through interaction and resistance, while ultimately ever shifting and changing. My practice is both rebellion and renewal, embracing contradiction and complexity to create space for queer, disabled existence as a source of power and beauty.

Artist Bio:
Wren Schulz is a mixed media metals artist currently pursuing an MFA in jewelry and metals at Edinboro University. They received their undergraduate degree in Journalism in 2023 from the University of Georgia as well as completing a post baccalaureate in jewelry and metals there in 2024. Their work plays with combining plastics and fibers with traditional metals techniques to create layers of texture as part of a larger discussion on identity, queerness, and disability.