Patricia Daunis-Dunning | Maine Arts Fellowship - Brunswick, Maine

Artist Statement 2021

I am a jeweler and a metalsmith. I've been a professional craft artist since 1973 and my studio and showroom are located downtown Portland, Maine. While a student at the Rhode Island School of Design I swore I would never make jewelry, only hollowware and sculptural forms. I turned every jewelry making assignment into some sort of hollowware.

When I graduated and started my own studio, I realized no one was lining up for a chalice or sterling teapot, but, they were asking me about jewelry. It was then that I discovered that my ability to move the metal into all kinds of sculptural forms, thanks to training in making hollowware, allowed me to create any jewelry shape I could dream up.

My skills translated my sculpture and hollowware into jewelry: smaller scale, site specific sculpture. The form that would fit on an ear could be three-dimensional because of all the space off the ear lobe, while the form that became a pendant might have to be more two dimensional. A ring encircling a finger would be three-dimensional and the form should wrap around the entire finger as a sculpture would. This is the jewelry I would create while still making the sculptural hollowware forms I so loved.

Visit Patricia Daunis-Dunning's website.

Work Examples: