Join us for Sondra Sherman’s Visiting Artist talk on Monday, November 2, 2026.
“My work is inspired by the distinctive voice of jewelry as a cultural artifact understood in the psychological and social context of the body/wearer. To make the familiar visible as symbolic, I embrace jewelry signifiers—human scale, fine detail, gemstones, botanical and amuletic forms. I then unsettle that familiarity through material contradictions, obsessive construction, interaction with the body and contextual framing via presentation boxes / displays. Subject matter and curiosity drive my choice of materials and process. I conflate traditional jewelry materials and skilled handwork, with industrial metals, found objects and textiles additionally employing photography and digital processes. Over time, I have created diverse bodies of work while consistently returning to the same underlying question; how meaning takes shape through objects...and how that meaning is negotiated between individuals, bodies, and social situations. Whether engaging questions of gender / social identity, grief and commemoration, superstition and healing, or cultural displacement, I aim to create work that is approachable yet unresolved, inviting a broad audience to a conversation grounded in empathy.”
This Visiting Artist talk is co-hosted by the Metalsmithing & Jewelry department'.