Maia Leppo - Fall 2023 Resident
Maia Leppo graduated from Tufts University in 2008 with a degree in Biology and Community Health. She received training in jewelry and metals from various craft schools, including Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Pocosin Arts, Penland School of Crafts and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and her Masters of Fine Art from SUNY New Paltz. She has participated in artist residencies at Arrowmont and Fallingwater and has taught around the country including Penland, Arrowmont, Pocosin, and Touchstone. She currently works out of her studio in the Brewhouse Association on the south side of Pittsburgh.
While at PlySpace, Maia will work with the Ball State Metals Guild to bring the Radical Jewelry Makeover (RJM) to Muncie.
Radical Jewelry Makeover
Radical Jewelry Makeover (RJM) has been traveling nationally and internationally to communities since 2007, educating jewelers of all levels about mining and material sourcing issues involved in jewelry making through a fun, fast-paced semester-long project. Jewelry students at Ball State University and professional jewelers from the regional community will transform jewelry donations into radically fresh and responsible jewelry. The project will culminate in an exhibition of these wearable creations displayed at the Grunewald Gallery at Indiana University, Bloomington and at the PlySpace Gallery for a First Thursday Artwalk event in 2024. Dates and details are coming soon.
RJM draws attention to the creativity and skills of local jewelry designers, reveals the stories behind our personal collections, and encourages re-consideration of our habits of consumption. Currently, materials used in jewelry production are sourced from some of the poorest countries in the world, sacred lands and disputed territories. Often, this sourcing comes at a great cost to the environment. In Muncie, RJM will bring together volunteer “miners,” who dig out and donate their old jewelry, with volunteer jewelers, visiting artists, and students, working together as “refiners and designers” to collaborate on an exhibition of re-made jewelry. Radical Jewelry Makeover will offer an informed and creative alternative to traditional mining practices and jewelry production.
Today, the EPA estimates that hard rock mining is the most toxic industry in the United States. Additionally, Earthworks reports that an estimated 80% of the gold mined each year is used for jewelry, and that a single gold ring leaves 20 tons of mine waste. Ethical Metalsmiths, an artist-run non-profit organization seeks to galvanize mining reform efforts by staging an "alternative supply chain" and is working with the Ball State Metals Guild to bring their successful project, Radical Jewelry Makeover to Muncie this fall.
