WEAR IT NOW
lead, silk string, and silver
1992
Trivial Mess
lead and silver
1999
Bored
lead and silver
1999
Tiara
lead and silver
2002
Mine
lead and silver
2004
Forget Me Knots
lead, silk string, and silver
2007


STATEMENT

Present is a body of work about the weight of holding onto toxic relationships. I created six necklaces from lead, modeled after jewelry I was given—gifts that carried more vindictiveness than sentiment. These pieces were tools of manipulation, designed to provoke anger and inflict hurt.

For years, I kept the jewelry, convinced its material value outweighed the damage it represented. But objects, like memories, carry their own kind of poison. Lead, heavy and corrosive, became the perfect medium to reconstruct these relics of the past.

This work examines how jewelry can act as both a shield and a burden, a way to cling to what should be let go. The necklaces are neither purely sentimental nor entirely discardable—they are artifacts of a past that refuses to be erased.