About

Sculptural scientific illustrations, thoughtfully handcrafted in recycled gold and silver.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Through my jewelry work over the past 20+ years, I have maintained a connection with the craft traditions of ancient goldsmiths. My subjects, materials and techniques have included intricate snakes and insects made through forging, chasing, marriage of metals, granulation and stone setting; anatomical models, cephalopods, spiders and woven/twined webs. I am interested in the inherent, enduring human connection between nature and art, and in the way human animals are simultaneously of nature and within it, with embodiment both limiting and conferring direct experience of our lived environment. The broadly disparate ways non-human animals sense and perceive their lived environments and narratives from natural history invite a sense of discovery, to take one's time and look closely, senses attenuated to minutiae. My dearest intention is to celebrate and expose dramas of the lived environment through miniaturized sculptural adornments that simultaneously invite curiosity and satisfy it. My work draws on themes from evolutionary biology, anatomy and physiology, tattoo art, art nouveau and natural history to invoke a sense of wonderment and at times a subtle unease in our biological selves and environment.

Many of my jewels incorporate handmade mechanisms and I have favored designs that were reproducible on a limited scale in order to make jewelry that is valuable yet approachable to young collectors. Environmentally conscious studio and sourcing practices, a "Cradle to Grave" ethic, informs the materials and techniques I choose to implement.

The most loved design I have produced, of which several iterations have been made, is my Original Silver Anatomical Heart Locket from 2009. Other past collections, including Phasmids, Earthworms, Tentacles, Snakes, Spiderwebs, Drip Drip Splash, Honeycombs, Fungi, Fish School Mobiles and more, can be seen in the Past Work gallery. 

Currently, I am working on new Insects, Snakes, and Spiders. My new work is exciting: more elaborate, narrative and focused not on reproducibility but on uniqueness and technical experimentation.  It resembles my past work in its relationship to scientific illustration and intention to explore a detailed world in miniature, but departs from it in its preciousness and ornamentation.

Thank you for your interest in my work.

Peggy Skemp, July 24, 2024

ABOUT:

Peggy Skemp is a studio jeweler making sculptural and fine jewelry in recycled silver and gold. She has been making art jewelry since 2001 and has shown and sold her work internationally through galleries, online and in-person. She has made jewelry for celebrities and TV, including the new hit series, Star Trek, Picard, in which earrings she made were used as communication devices by characters on the show.  Peggy was voted Best Chicago Jeweler, 2013, by the Chicago Reader. Her work has been featured internationally on CNN, local broadcast and print news in Wisconsin and IL, and in American Craft Magazine, and can be found at select independent retailers. Peggy currently lives and works in La Farge, WI, with her partner, son and two dogs. In her free time she likes to read, garden, draw, weave, and Peggy is shepherdess to a very small flock of beautiful sheep.

Contact Peggy with any questions or to commission a work of fine art jewelry:

info@peggyskemp.com