Caroline Davis is a metalsmith and ceramic artist teaching multiple disciplines such as Design, Art Metals, Sculpture, Ceramics, and Photography at Northeast Lakeview College. She lives in San Antonio, Texas with her son, two spoiled cats, and a big lizard. She is currently spending her time collaboratively writing a novel, working on her Ph.D. in Fine Arts at Warnborough, Ireland, and making metal and porcelain art jewelry that explores the fine art connections with high craft material and processes. Caroline holds two Master’s degrees from Stephen F. Austin State University (University of Texas System), a Master of Art in Fine Arts and a Master of Arts in English.
Artist Statement
Two series of her art jewelry are represented in the Kent Art Con Exhibition 2025. Both series highlight Caroline’s interest in creating wearable art jewelry made with unexpected material. The Compositions in Silver series unites the fine craft process of silversmithing with drawing and painting. The compositions on paper are diminutive examples of non-objective design concerned with aesthetics and are of a material and function usually reserved for the “fine arts.”
Larger paintings that hang in galleries are afforded higher status than jewelry by many critics because of their aesthetic purity or “art for art’s sake” footing. By repositioning the paper pieces as the centerpieces of decorative jewelry instead of framed fine art, she challenges the viewer to reconsider the value inherent in jewelry versus that of drawing or painting. In traditional jewelry making, materials such as diamonds, gold, and even silver are
used to make work that has inherent monetary value and status. The Compositions in Silver series instead elevates the watercolor and ink drawings, allowing them to be viewed as beautiful objects and playfully lending them some of the status of fine jewels, while the drawings as traditional fine art material ironically lend the art status that often eludes the “decorative arts” such as jewelry making.
The sculptural porcelain, luster, and brass jewelry piece, Vessel and Orifices, explores biomorphic, even feminine forms like open vessels, shells, or seeds. The bone-like quality of the fired porcelain is juxtaposed with both the antiqued and high-gloss gold luster, adding a gleaming, decorative surface as well as highlighting the cracks and patterns that exist in the hand-built clay forms. Clay, particularly porcelain, is associated with fine craft, especially
dishware and functional pottery. Vessel and Orifices has fine craft association with it that the artist attempts to subvert by creating striking, sculptural gold-accented forms that are meant to be displayed on the body as objects of beauty. These objects hint at their inspiration, abstracted genitals and reproductive organs of women, that “polite company” is so quick to eschew, but American politicians and religious theocrats are so devoted to controlling..