Wednesday, September 25 @ 5:00 – 6:15pm
Elvehjem L160
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
“A straight line is a dangerous assumption…”
Steven KP is an artist, jeweler, and educator with a practice rooted in questions of material culture, empathy, and the complexity of care.
Academically trained as a jeweler and working in a long lineage of immigrant and diasporic carpenters, KP’s carved and cast works are known for their lyrical qualities that can be read as metaphors and embodiments of lived queer experiences. By using hand tools and a jeweler’s bench, their carved and entangled gestural forms are rendered with care in response to the embedded wounds, scars, and growth marks of the material block in a consciously slow and reciprocal practice. Their material-based research and making has positioned KP as a leading voice in craft and art discussions surrounding object-agency, queer ecology, and intergenerational responses to loss and lineage.
KP received their Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in Jewelry and Metalsmithing and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently residing in Providence, Rhode Island, they hold teaching positions between the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and RISD as well as teach as a master jeweler for Tiffany & Co. KP’s work and critical writing has been widely featured in publications such as Metalsmith Magazine, Ornament Magazine, The Decorative Arts Trust, Art Jewelry Forum, and German arts and culture magazine, Art Aurea. Their work is housed in numerous private and public collections nationally and internationally including the Museum of Art and Design in New York, NY and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI. KP’s practice is primarily represented by Gallery Loupe in Montclair, New Jersey, Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h in Montreal, Quebec, and Galerie Beyond in Antwerp, Belgium. stevenkp.com