Sugar Plums

Sequins, Thread, Felt, Sterling Silver

2 in x 1.25 in x 0.5 in

These earrings are made from felt that I cover with sequins and stitch with colorful contrasting thread. My process with materials often involves repetition and obsessive, laborious acts. I work with found materials, objects, and jewelry to express emotion, explore the past, and tell stories.
Sequins have a long history. They began as markers of wealth, status, and protection, and later became tied to glamour, performance, and childhood craft. In this work I use sequins as historical markers of status and as a personal material through which I explore my youth. The process of covering, altering, and transforming the surface deals with performance, change, and the ways we examine our past selves in order to shape our future identity.

Artist Bio:
Vivienne Varay is a contemporary art jeweler whose work examines how materials carry emotional, cultural, and personal meaning. Her practice centers on the body and the ways adornment can shape experiences of identity, intimacy, and memory. Through jewelry and wearable objects, she investigates how emotional states and past relationships become embedded in the things we keep, wear, and discard.

She works primarily in metals and textiles, often incorporating found or symbolic materials such as pearls, fur, lead, and fabric. She treats these materials not only for their formal qualities, but for their histories and the ways they speak to vulnerability, power, and transformation. Her process often begins with a strong emotional response or a memory, which she explores through making. She approaches her studio practice as both research and reflection, combining traditional craft techniques with conceptual questions about what it means to wear, hold, or be marked by an object.