Symposium Presenters

Each year, the Symposium features 10 talented emerging and established artists, with two presentations each day of the event. During their sessions, presenters will share their jewelry and metalsmithing knowledge and inspiration, demonstrate one or more of their signature techniques, and give us a peek inside around their studios or at their body of work!

Ben Cooke-Akaiwa

Faux Granulation
Monday, April 1 at 12-1:30 PM Eastern

Ben is a jeweler and metalsmith in Bloomington, IN. His work is one of constant change, moving between wearables, vessels, and sculpture, and is informed by grief, loss, self-reflection, and reconstruction. In his work, Ben explores different materials within the same form, reflecting the process of rebuilding a foundation. Ben graduated from Indiana University (IU) in May of 2019 with a BFA in Metalsmithing and Jewelry Design. He is currently pursuing his MFA from IU. He has supplemented his education through workshops at Arrowmont Craft School, the Baltimore Jewelry Center (BJC) and an apprenticeship in Japan. He has participated in residencies at the Baltimore Jewelry Center and Arrowmont and has taught workshops at the BJC and Metalwerx. Ben has exhibited his work internationally in the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, and Canada.

Website: bencookeakaiwa.com
Instagram: @bcookeakaiwa

Margo Csipő

Working with Mother of Pearl
Monday, April 1 at 4 PM Eastern

Margo Csipő is an emerging art jeweler, illustrator, and educator at the Baltimore Jewelry Center and Maryland Institute College of Art. She has a BFA in industrial Design from the Massachusetts College of Art and is heavily influenced by narrative-based art forms like film, animation and graphic novels. Tapping into her lived experience as a queer artist and a child of Hungarian immigrant, Margo creates fabrication-heavy illustrative compositions with mother of pearl scrimshaw.

Website: margocsipo.com

Instagram: @alwaysrelaxin

Logan Woodle

Demystifying Pewter
Tuesday, April 2 at 12–1:30 PM Eastern

Logan Woodle is a metalsmith, educator, and the 7th generation to live on his family farm in Conway, SC. He earned an MFA from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2012 and a BFA from Winthrop University in 2009. Currently, Logan is Chair of the Department of Visual Art at Coastal Carolina University. His work explores the intersections between income inequality, climate change, agrarian culture, and craft. Logan’s work has been exhibited across the country including the Metal Museum’s exhibition, 40 Under 40: The Next Generation of American Metal Artists, and Food Justice: Growing a Healthier Community through Art at Contemporary Craft.

Website: www.loganwoodle.com
Instagram: @loganwoodlemetalsmith

Nanette Pengelley

Double-Sided Prong Setting
Tuesday, April 2 at 4–5 PM Eastern

Nanette Pengelley is an artist, designer, and educator in Boston, MA. She received her BFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from MassArt in 2015 and founded her brand, Hew Jewelry, in 2016.Nanette’s work pairs encountered materials with a willingness to leave the metal in its natural state—to do away with the traditional inclination to make something appear flawless and symmetrical, yet still arrive at a harmonious composition with an organic finish. Through Hew Jewelry, she also focuses on sustainable practices, exploratory approaches, and discovering beauty in the unconventional

Website: hewjewelry.com
Instagram: @hewjewelry

Greg Wilbur

The Art of Raising
Wednesday, April 3 at 12-1:30 PM Eastern

Greg Wilbur is an Oregon born metalsmith/ artist / teacher. He has practiced the art of raising metal for 40 years and is especially known for extreme raising and hammering single flat sheets of copper, brass, pewter or silver into closed sculptural forms.

Born and educated in Oregon, Greg finished formal schooling at the University of Oregon in 1978 with degrees in Fine Art and Art Education. He is a Vietnam veteran. Greg is a longtime active supporter of the Creative Metal Art Guild, Sitka Center of Art and Ecology, Seattle Metal Guild and Society of North American Goldsmiths; and was a founder of Art in the Pearl in Portland. He has taught his art form all over the US and internationally in Canada, New Zealand and France. He has participated in over 100 exhibitions all over America including the Smithsonian Craft Fair and Philadelphia Crafts Show. He seeks to make fine objects in which the observer can find beauty, meaning and substance. He shares his skills when he can.

Website: www.gregwilbur.com

Gokul Bakshi

Hot-Forging Silver Spoons
Wednesday, April 3 at 4-5 PM Eastern

Gokul Bakshi is a multidisciplinary artist and educator from New Delhi, India. Gokul's process is a dance between deliberation and discovery. He translates force and action through materials, reflecting upon the choices we take in our lives. Gokul studied Sculpture at Skidmore College and Is currently pursuing his MFA in Metal at the State University of New Paltz, New York. At SUNY, Gokul has been an instructor of record of Intro to Metalsmithing as well as a graduate student assistant technical assistant to Adam Mastropaolo in the Metals Department. Gokul has also taught metalsmithing to highschoolers at Snow Farm Centre for Craft. In 2018, Gokul established Metalurso, a jewelry production and design studio that was dedicated to merging a studio arts practice with the practice of local production jewellers in New Delhi. His work has been exhibited at several international venues including the Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY), The Tang Museum of Art (Saratoga Springs, NY) and the Boulder Box Gallery (New Delhi, India). Some of Gokul’s sculptures can be found on the Skidmore College campus today.

Website: www.gokulbakshi.com

Instagram: @gokurusan

Kim Nogueira

Hand-Colored Decals On Enamels
Thursday, April 4 at 12-1:30 PM

Kim Nogueira's work with enamel and metal harnesses the dual power of imagery and text from the historical record and speaks to the collective unconscious realm that we all share, embracing the mind, the imagination and higher aspects of consciousness as a powerful mythopoetic tool for sentience and change. She learned metalsmithing while working on the job as a production goldsmith for 16 years. Her BA in sociology from Smith College and subsequent deep trance hypnosis training support the intuitively-guided metaphysical explorations that undergird her narrative art practice. Kim's work has been in juried and invitational exhibitions both nationally and abroad, with showings at the Tokyo Museum of Art, LA Joaillerie par Mazlo in Paris, the Museum of Arts and Design and a 2023 solo show, Paradox Found, at Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge MA. Her work has been published in Metalsmith and Art Aurea as well as in more than 15 exhibition catalogues and books, including 1000 Beads, Behind the Brooch, and Narrative Jewelry: Tales from the Toolbox and one of her mechanical pieces is in the permanent collection of the Morris Museum.

Website: kimnogueira.com

Instagram: @kimnogueirastudio

Andy Lowrie

Layered & Distressed Color on Metal
Thursday, April 4 at 4-5 PM Eastern

Andy Lowrie is a jewelry artist who makes sculptural and wearable objects, works on paper and paint-based installations. He is an Australian maker, living and working in the United States. Andy pursues contemporary expressions of jewellery making that interrogate and reflect his life and experiences while drawing on the power of a wearable object to act as an extension of a maker/wearer’s intentions and desires. The potential of process and material as metaphor is a touchstone of his practice, expressed through his experimentation with surface finishes that include paint, powder coat and enamel. Andy Lowrie Jewellery is his eponymous line of handmade sterling silver jewelry. His work has been exhibited in Australia, China, Europe and North America, and has been professionally recognized with awards from Brooklyn Metal Works in New York and My-Day By-Day Gallery in Rome. From 2020-2023 he was the inaugural Teaching Fellow at the Baltimore Jewelry Center. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at Towson University, Johns Hopkins University and Montgomery College.

Website: www.andylowrie.com

Instagram: @starbreakr

Marne Ryan

Exploring Texture Through Fusing
Friday, April 5 at 12–1:30 PM Eastern

Marne Ryan is a constructive pyromaniac and recipient of the Rolex Eward for excellence in Metals. She has been exploring and teaching the process of making textures through heat since 1976. Her jewelry and vessels have won national and international awards and recognition in the United States, Japan, Europe, and Australia. Her work has been represented by The American Craft Museum in New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art and Signature Stadtischaan Museum, in Sweden. Articles on her work include Ornament Magazine, Lapidary Journal and the book Contemporary American Jewelry Design.

Website: www.marneryan.com
Instagram: @marneryandesigns

Vincent Potter

Pattern Rolling for Cuffs & Bangles
Friday, April 5 at 4–5 PM Eastern

Vincent Potter is an artist, craft revivalist, and printmaker in Tuscon, Arizona. He runs the Cranston Fancy Wire company which offers decorative wire by the foot in copper, brass, and silver. Originally founded in 1867, Cranston Fancy Wire had six owners before the Potters. They manufacture both finished jewelry for display purposes and unfinished findings using 19th century equipment and methods.

Vincent is also a proud part of the crew at Potter USA in Tucson, Arizona, which is one of only three jewelry tool and die companies left in the United States and the only one still producing new dies and patterns. As a jewelry tool and die maker, Vincent's primary focus is on archiving, restoring, and reissuing historic jewelry pattern dies. The company has amassed a pattern die collection from 52 businesses that made jewelry from 1804 to 1970, comprising more than 1,250,000 hubs and dies. They offer a continuously changing catalog of dies and silver stampings.

Website: www.potterusa.com/cranston-fancy-wire-co
Instagram: @cranstonfancywireco

Symposium Information

All sessions will be presented live over Zoom, and recorded.
Links for each session will be emailed one day before the symposium begins, and an hour before each live presentation.
Registration grants access to all seminar sessions (live and recorded) and social events.
Participants will be sent links to all recorded educational seminars and demonstrations at the beginning of April. Recordings will be available to watch until August 1. Please note that any social events will not be recorded or shared later.
Closed captions are available on live webinars and webinars.