I am about to expand upon a new series of artworks that explore the cultural construction of identity through personal adornment. It will result in four wearable metal objects and related imagery and will be completed during my development leave this fall. This series, You Are (the) Here, is inspired by the historic relationship between body adornment, the idealized self and the souvenir that has been indicated by such things as pilgrimage badges of the middle ages, neoclassical…

I proposed this series of objects based on past experiences of having developed relationships with new cities through travel. Supposing this would happen again in each new city,  I was a little unsure of how long it would take to find a personal representation of place; a signifier of the city that was more individualistically based than the famous masterpieces and landmarks. In my first city, Paris, I did indeed wonder on the first day how one person could possibly build a…