MassArt offers both BFA and MFA degrees in Fine Arts 3D with a concentration in jewelry and metalsmithing. The department provides degrees for students and continuing education students seeking beginning, intermediate and advanced education in metal arts. In addition to technical processes, metals students are educated in decorative arts history and contemporary art and craft, through visiting artists, concepts and ideation and professional practices related to the field. Students are instructed in principal technologies, methods and strategies for professional participation in visual arts. This may be as artist or design practitioners, as collaborative studio partners, studio assistants, artist-educators, graduate research students, or generally as creative problem solvers in many walks of professional life.
The department continues to provide active awareness of contemporary artists and issues in the field by inviting many visiting artists per semester for the student’s direct exposure to professionals. As the organizing host of many conferences and symposia, we seek to engage the students in participatory experiences that may serve them well beyond their time at MassArt.
Classes with focused instruction offer experiences in the manipulation of metal (primarily non-ferrous). A sequence of direct hands-on experiences is offered to provide information and to instill a broad, tacit understanding and appreciation of the properties, behaviors, opportunities and limitations inherent in creating objects in metal and other materials. Our educational strategy has been to offer a series of subsequent technical exercises through all required and elective studio classes. These exercises are linked to aesthetic problems designed to focus material learning through intellectual problem solving and issues in contemporary art and craft dialogue. Seminar classes in the junior and senior years provide a forum for the study, discussion, writing and presentation of concepts related to the profession. Review Boards at the end of each semester provide feedback for students and an opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue with three or more artists, educators and arts organization professionals.
The jewelry/metals studio and facilities at MassArt are among the best equipped and safest in the country. Instruction in all significant techniques is offered during the course of the program. These include:
- Jewelry construction in base and precious materials
- Metal finishing and surface embellishment techniques
- Vacuum investing for centrifugal lost wax casting
- Vulcanized rubber and 'RTV' mold processes
- Large scale raising and forming for sculpture and hollowware
- Computer Aided Design for Jewelry (Rhino 3D)
The department maintains a jewelry-making, metal-forming, casting and machine-tool workshop. A wide selection of hand tools, power tools, torches, kilns, chemicals, books, cameras, slides, projectors and computers are employed to educate students in both methods and strategies of traditional and contemporary work. Adjacent to the workshop space, there is a 'clean room' used for critiques, visiting artist presentations, computer equipment and photography.
The Staff
Heather White van Stolk is currently Associate Professor of Art in the Jewelry and Metalsmithing Department at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. She is a recent recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to study and teach in Florence, Italy and a Brother Thomas Fellowship given anonymously through the Boston Foundation. Her work is published in the Penland Book of Jewelry, Metalsmith, American Craft, Ornament and Sculpture magazines. Permanent collections include Museum of Art and Design (MAD) New York City, Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Charlotte, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Daphne Farago Collection and the Rotasa Collection Trust. Her wearable jewelry is represented by Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Joe Wood, Professor, has been teaching jewelry, metalsmithing and other classes at MassArt since 1985. Workshops include The Royal College of Art in London, Haystack, Penland, Arrowmont and other places. Exhibitions of work include Schmuck in Munich (2001) and Signals: Late 20th Century American Jewelry at the Cranbrook Museum of Art. Work is in the public collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Museum of Fine Arts, Racine and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Instructor Deb Todd Wheeler produces installations and objects that explore the aesthetic impact of human productivity in the natural world. From power generating interactive installations to cataloging prints of plastic as a possible new species of marine life, to working with live Western Harvester ants where, as Ann Wilson Lloyd wrote in Art in America, 'ants are perfect collaborators for Wheeler, as their industry is a micro-complement to her own intensive, finely wrought crafting, and her ongoing interest in science and nature.' Recent exhibitions in the last year include the ICA at MeCA in the exhibition Exchange and a solo exhibit at Miller Block Gallery, The New Britain Museum of American Art, the Islip Art Museum, as well as the Megapolis Audio Art and Documentary Festival. Other recent solo exhibits include the Gallery at Green Street and the Project Space at the John Michael Kohler Art Center. This year her work was chosen by both the Boston Globe and the Boston Phoenix as 'Best Exhibitions of 2010' and was awarded the Best Solo Exhibition and Best New Media of 2010 in the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research annual awards. She has also received an individual artist grant from the Artist Resource Trust, an LEF Contemporary Work Fund Artist grant in Inter-media, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Sculpture and Installation, a MCC Finalist in Photography and an AIR project grant. She teaches in the metals department at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is on the Graduate Faculty at the Art Institute of Boston.
Studio Manager and Adjunct Instructor Peter Evonuk is a farm boy, door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, appliance delivery dude, construction worker, roofer, metalsmith, sculptor, art instructor and social satirist from the island of Maui. Peter received his BFA in Sculpture/Metalsmithing and Jewelry from the University of Oregon (2001) and his MFA in Metalsmithing from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (2005). He presently serves Mass College of Art and Design as an instructor and studio manager.
