Keywords: jewelry, jewellery, craft, making, loneliness, romantic love, intimacy, touch, skin, surrogate
Through an interdisciplinary, phenomenological, artistic jewelry practice, and interpretive analysis of theoretical, artistic, and subjective phenomena, I aim to examine the relationship between the making of jewelry and loneliness to reveal what loneliness may look and feel like as well as the possibilities for artifacts and/or creative practice to act as a surrogate for intimacy, touch, and/or another human body. From a first-person narrative, the maker as researcher, I aim to bring loneliness to the forefront as an unnamed or concealed experience in jewelry and emphasize its significance as a matter of social and cultural relevance in seeking human connection. And further, how any manifestations may be interpreted to construct new dimensions of being human as part of somatic and mindful inquiry in artistic research. By uncovering the overlays between emotional and physical disruptive experiences and the acts of making, the boundaries of traditional jewelry roles in the studio and in society may be expanded — which could alter not only understanding of how loneliness is considered, felt, and expressed; but also how art and craft are made within and despite its presence. If loneliness is present and is acknowledged, then the body, the studio, and the exhibition become permissible sites for the public expression of loneliness as well as meaningful human connections with the self and others. Thus, the making of jewelry and the jewelry artifacts could promote presence in absence and absence as presence: something entirely new for the fields of both jewelry and loneliness research.
Erinn M. Cox is a jeweler from the United States who is solely focused on making metal love letters for the body as she unravels matters of the heart of being unwantingly single. She holds a BFA and MFA in Studio Art (USA), a MA degree in Jewellery (Estonia), and is an Artistic Research PhD Fellow in Jewellery & Metal Arts in the department of Art & Craft at KhiO in Oslo. Erinn is an internationally exhibited jeweler, professor, and published writer on contemporary art, jewelry, and philosophy. For more, visit www.erinnmcox.com