Amelia Toelke works in lots of media: jewellery, illustration, sculpture, graphic design, and many others.
As an undergrad at SUNY New Paltz, she was drawn to the best way steel encompasses utilitarian objects like buckets and spoons, but additionally ceremonial objects like reliquaries, censers, and jewellery
She designed the brand to have a good time AJF’s twenty fifth anniversary, which we’ve used all through 2022
Amelia Toelke is a multidisciplinary artist who’s fluent within the language of decoration, whether or not that be in jewellery, portray, or sculpture. Her Gem Face sequence interprets 3D jewellery into humorous 2D work, highlighting the feelings and nostalgia imbued in jewellery. Toelke’s apply has taken her overseas to cities akin to Lanzhou, China, and Tbilisi, Georgia, to take part in artist residencies. Her work has been revealed in Metalsmith journal, The Washington Put up, and 500 Enameled Objects.
Olivia Shih: After I visited your web site, I laughed after I noticed the artist portrait you selected—it’s an excellent illustration your dad did of you as a toddler and entails a beloved vest, cereal, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What was it like rising up in a artistic family?
Amelia Toelke: It was fantastic! There have been all the time supplies round that my sister and I may use to create our personal initiatives and worlds—cardboard, a number of completely different sorts of paper, rubylith (a masking movie), markers, Letraset sheets, and a photocopy machine. I used to be most likely utilizing an X-acto knife as early as I began utilizing coloured pencils. My sister and I had been all the time making issues and infrequently we had been making issues collectively. Our mother and father labored at house, and I feel that prompted us to maintain ourselves occupied. Subconsciously, and for higher or worse, there was the concept house was a spot to work.
Additionally, as a result of our mother and father had been round, we couldn’t get away with simply watching tv. Nevertheless it saved us artistic (and don’t fear, we positively watched our fair proportion of TV). Once we each went to artwork faculty, our mother and father had been absolutely on board, nearly anticipating it! As a result of our mother and father had been self-employed, it all the time felt potential to dwell a artistic life—that work and creativity could possibly be related and that one’s personal abilities and ambition could possibly be a way of creating a residing.
Jewellery charms play a outstanding position in your work—what’s it about charms that’s so compelling to you?
Amelia Toelke: Charms are visible language on prime of visible language. They aren’t solely symbols that stand in for advanced tales. By being jewellery, they’re embedded inside private area, the physique, and private and non-private interplay. I’m all for the best way that these layered meanings define advanced narrative. Similar to how a phrase can have a number of meanings relying on context or tradition, a allure will evoke completely different definitions or reminiscences relying on the particular person carrying the allure or trying on the allure. In that approach, their meanings are each collective and particular person. They’ve the facility to comprise whole tales and experiences. A allure may stand in for a visit overseas, or 25 years of marriage, or a life-long ardour for pictures.
In my work, I embrace charms in our vernacular language of symbols. I’m additionally interested in the notion of cliché and the parameters that decide it. After I use classic charms in my jewellery, they bring about unknown histories and tales with the shapes of the charms as little clues. After I flatten the charms into graphic icons, they’re like hieroglyphics or rebus puzzles.
In your Gem Face drawings, you compose expressive faces with jewellery. What impressed you to create this sequence?
Amelia Toelke: I don’t bear in mind the precise second. I do keep in mind that sooner or later I noticed a necklace laid out with earrings and thought, “Face!” On the time, I used to be doing collages with emoji photos, so faces had been on my thoughts. After I made the primary one, I bear in mind feeling slightly self-conscious that it was too foolish. Nevertheless it was such a pleasure to make and it made me so completely satisfied that I figured I ought to lean into that feeling. There’s nothing like laughing whereas on the studio. Jewellery can also be so intertwined with our sense of self. By actually creating expressive faces with jewellery I may put this concept entrance and middle.
How did you select which items of bijou to depict on this sequence?
Amelia Toelke: Partly I selected items that I felt like would translate properly to the web page. I’m not a educated jewellery renderer or perhaps a painter, so I appeared for items of bijou that I felt would work with my extra graphic/flattened fashion of illustration. I considered coloration, and typically I had an concept of what sort of piece would evoke a particular feeling.
I additionally deliberately made surprising pairings. I may have simply used matching units of bijou, however I believed it was extra attention-grabbing visually to create these juxtapositions. It spoke to the true depths of 1’s jewellery field and, as such, one’s persona. Most individuals have jewellery that they put on and jewellery that stays saved away for numerous causes. All these items describe completely different features of an individual and their historical past. So many people preserve the jewellery from our childhood regardless that we don’t put on it. Or we would have a extremely stunning heirloom treasure that will get worn possibly as soon as each few years. It made sense to create this sequence utilizing a mixture of advantageous, up to date, historic, and classic jewellery.
Talking of your 2D work, you typically mix pure gold leaf into your drawings. Making use of gold leaf to paper generally is a meticulous, time-consuming chore. Why are you drawn to this system particularly?
Amelia Toelke: A part of what I like about gold leaf is that it’s meticulous and time-consuming! As somebody steeped on this planet of object making, I’m drawn to the historic and tactile qualities of gold leaf. To me, the materiality of gold leaf additionally brings it into the world of objects. The area between object and picture has captured my curiosity for a very long time. This can be a theme that exhibits up all through all of my work, whether or not or not it’s on the web page, on the physique, or on the ground. By utilizing gold leaf, I really feel like I can create a hybrid object—one which straddles the realms of 2D and 3D.
Gold can also be simply so magical. It doesn’t tarnish and it’s luminescent. Whereas it makes my work not possible to {photograph}, it truly is superb to see how a chunk will all of the sudden glow. Each time I gold leaf one thing, I’m reminded why we people love this steel.
Inform us about your coaching and the way you grew to become a visible artist who strikes between jewellery, drawing, and sculpture.
Amelia Toelke: My highschool artwork program was fairly naked bones, however I’ve all the time beloved drawing and making small issues. As a child, I spent plenty of time making beaded jewellery. I additionally made many tiny objects utilizing polymer clay and paint. I bear in mind making a tiny tube of Crest toothpaste with a toothbrush and a plate with a wee hamburger, a milkshake and french fries. Loads of these objects grew to become pins, however some had been simply objects.
After graduating, I went to SUNY New Paltz. After I took my first metals class as a sophomore—with the incomparable Myra Mimlitsch-Grey—I fell in love. There was one thing so thrilling about specializing in course of and method. It felt actually pure. It was refreshing. Right now, I used to be not solely being uncovered to a complete new discipline of artwork and artwork making, however I used to be additionally seeing extra artwork on the whole—artwork that was witty, subversive, humorous, and sensible. I used to be drawn to the best way steel encompasses utilitarian objects like buckets and spoons, but additionally ceremonial objects like reliquaries and censers, and, in fact, jewellery.
Having this vary of fabric to work with was inspiring and allowed me to grasp how course of will be related to content material. It additionally spoke deeply to what I knew—my mother and father’ home is an unassuming trove of treasures. It has been richly painted with fake finishes, colourful patterns, and a trompe l’oeil window. It’s crammed with an eclectic mixture of salvaged stained glass, repurposed architectural fragments, and collections of objects previous, new, and handmade.
Subsequent, the three-year interdisciplinary MFA program at UW-Madison was such a present. It gave me permission to discover making extra non-functional work (a.okay.a. sculpture). I discovered a lot from working with Lisa Gralnick and Kim Cridle. When the steel grads had been assigned a 100-drawing mission, I considered approaching the mission modularly as collage. I drew parts individually after which put them collectively, which was extra comfy and was akin to the method of working three-dimensionally. I used to be hooked. And one of the best factor: drawing will not be sure by the foundations of the pure world, and I may create inconceivable vignettes that didn’t must take care of gravity. Bringing drawing again into my life in a approach that complemented the remainder of my work was defining. Since then it has develop into integral to my apply.
You additionally create public artwork, which is exponentially bigger than most jewellery and comes with its personal algorithm and challenges. What’s your conceptual and technical course of when creating public artwork?
Amelia Toelke: In some ways, I think about jewellery to be public artwork. Each are out on this planet, on show, meant to be seen and skilled. Each require the physique to play an energetic position. We would assume that jewellery is “quieter” as a result of it’s small, however context determines all the pieces. A big necklace may not really be very massive when in comparison with public artwork however, when worn, its scale compared to the physique has an enormous impact.
The 2020 piece Underpin & Overcoat was a collaboration with my pricey good friend Andrea Miller. It was a multi-site public work the place buildings “wore” massive pinback buttons, and I used to be enthusiastic about the messages we put out into the world by way of what we place on our our bodies. It wasn’t about simply making an enormous pin, it was additionally about how these big pins had been so simply and readily at house in a brand new context.
How do you make a residing as a visible artist? Are you a full-time artist, or do you tackle different jobs that maintain your apply?
Amelia Toelke: I’ve all the time juggled a number of jobs/issues at a time to make a residing. At the moment, I do graphic design and publication structure as a major technique of supporting my apply. I’ve labored at galleries and performed odd jobs. I additionally tackle customized initiatives/commissions and typically train part-time. I’ve type of found out a technique to make it work.
What do you cherish most within the up to date jewellery discipline? What’s one factor you’d change?
Amelia Toelke: I really feel extremely fortunate to be a part of a discipline that can also be a group. When you don’t know somebody, you positively know somebody who is aware of that different somebody, so it all the time seems like you’re in good firm. I wouldn’t change something concerning the group. I simply want that extra of us would see how vibrant up to date jewellery is!
Lastly, what thought-provoking content material have you ever consumed just lately?
Amelia Toelke: I really like fiction, so I actually take pleasure in studying novels even when I don’t do it sufficient. I discover that the act of immersion in a narrative is admittedly fruitful for my apply. I learn Avenue of Mysteries, by John Irving, earlier this yr. He’s one in all my favourite authors, and it was the proper mix of actuality, magical realism, absurdity, household, humor, previous, and current. Earlier this fall, my husband and I took a visit to Montreal and went to the Modern Artwork Museum. We had been blown away by the exhibition on view—Mika Rottenberg. I’m late to the sport with this multidisciplinary artist who makes surreal movies and sculptures. The movies on view had been mesmerizing, lush, with cyclical narrative that blended truth and fiction. Additionally, very jewelry-adjacent.
Thanks to your time, Amelia, and thanks for creating AJF’s twenty fifth anniversary emblem!