School of Art and Design Professor Collaborates to Create Online Exhibition, AMEND
Professor of Jewelry and Metalsmithing Kerianne Quick and University of Texas at El Paso Metals Professor Jess Tolbert have created AMEND, an online exhibition that uses the ‘I Voted’ sticker as jewelry inspiration for expressing voting rights and equity.
Leslie Boyd, An Act. An Action. Pictured: Lizeth Hernandez
by AMEND Press Release, edited by Aleah Jarin
October 9, 2020
October 9, 2020
Secret Identity Projects, an ongoing curatorial collaboration between School of Art and Design Professor of Jewelry and Metalsmithing Kerianne Quick and University of Texas at El Paso Metals Professor Jess Tolbert, presents AMEND: an online exhibition taking place in the month leading up to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. The online exhibition brings together art jewelers and metalsmiths currently working in the United States, and U.S./Mexico border cities, in response to the past, present, and future of one’s civic duty and privilege to vote and all that it entails.
AMEND commemorates the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, also known as Women’s Suffrage. This exhibition brings to the forefront the continued fight for true universal suffrage by promoting and supporting initiatives that combat voter suppression and advocate for expanding voting rights, while recognizing the work of the suffragists. To amend is to make minor changes in (a text) in order to make it fairer, more accurate, or more up-to-date. To amend is to modify (formally), to make better, to improve. To amend, is to put right.
Secret Identity Projects invited 100 female (she/they) identifying jewelers to design a piece of jewelry using the “I Voted” sticker as a jumping off point; charged to interpret it any way they like. Jewelry artists and metalsmiths from all levels of career and expression, from emerging to master, are included in the exhibition. The work demonstrates a broad range of subject matter and concern, taking on a multitude of forms and making many declarations about voting equity and the messy and complex history that includes.
The exhibition will support Black Voters Matter through a financial contribution generated from sales of the work, as well as bring attention to important voting issues through informational posts on Secret Identity Project’s Instagram and the AMEND website. Black Voters Matter is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing power in marginalized, predominantly Black communities.
The exhibition is now open and runs through November 22. See the online exhibition at amendexhibition.com.
The content within this article has been edited by Lizbeth Persons.
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