Working principally as a contemporary jeweler, I look at the world through the lens of adornment and decoration. From this perspective, I can approach all objects as bodies and view their outermost, decorative layer as adornment. My making has been concerned with the physical relationships of human bodies to objects and architectural spaces as evidenced by material changes that occur over time. I see this as a progression of my long-held interest in the objects we hold on to. The ones we use to communicate who we are and that continue to act as a monument to our existence when we are gone.
These earrings are shaped to resemble ribbons and strips of torn paper, translated into sheet metal and finished with powder coat and the durable enamel paints I used to paint figurines in my childhood. Ribbons remind me of the time I spent with my mother as a child, playing with her boxes of fabric scraps and ribbons, playfully reinventing discards and leftovers as useful and desirable objects to wear. Cut from thin, light strips of aluminum, my “ribbons” become surfaces to paint and fuse color onto; canvases that loop, bend and interact with each other as they drape off the body. I often use small works, like these earrings, to experiment with color for larger or more complex pieces. As such, they are joyful to make, free from the pressure of having to meet high expectations and indulging my intuitive creativity. In making them I can embrace the child in me, the feminine and the flamboyant. This work is made for those who find their power through these things.
Artist Bio:
Andy Lowrie is a jewelry artist who makes wearable, sculptural and functional objects, as well as works on paper. He is an Australian maker, living and working in the United States. Andy pursues contemporary expressions of jewelry and object making that interrogate and reflect his life and experiences while drawing on the power of a wearable object to act as an extension of a maker/wearer’s intentions and desires. Narratives of queerness, family, labor and environmental catastrophe are currently feeding this work. The potential of process and material as metaphor is also important to his practice, expressed through experimentation with surface finishes that include paint, powder coat and enamel.
His work has been exhibited in Australia, China, Europe and North America, and has been professionally recognised with awards from Brooklyn Metal Works in New York and My-Day By-Day Gallery in Rome. From 2020-2023 he was the inaugural Teaching Fellow at the Baltimore Jewelry Center. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at Towson University and Johns Hopkins University.
