Avalon Palmer
she/her
Providence, RI, USA
I'm Avalon Palmer, a student at RISD. I studied metalsmithing for a while, starting out in blacksmithing and iron sculpture. Since then I've begun to include precious metals and stones, but my devotion is to metal meeting the body.
“As a craftsperson and artist, my interests are in human certainty and experience in conversation with our internal and external worlds. A few expressions of these concepts are prayer, magic/ritual, control, and transcendence. In my work I often examine how the wearer can be transformed by the worn, and well as the other way around.”
What does being queer mean to you in relation to your material choices? Is it something you consider?
“Throughout my career, I've been motived by my love of metal. As I've come into my queer and trans identities, the thing I think about most is how queerness allows me to not only transcend but embody the traditional, rewriting and rediscovering the queer relationship to history and tradition. With this in mind, I tend to be drawn towards, rather than away from traditional techniques and processes. My goal in this is to recapture straightwashed history, and force the viewer to understand queerness as a historical endeavor spanning human history, rather than a trapping of our ‘contemporary’ world."
Is the work queer because the maker is queer, or is it queer because the subject matter is queer?
“The work is queer because the maker is queer, and therefore inherently so is it's subject matter. We can't separate ourselves from lenses of identity, and therefore the subject matter we deal with is inherently related. Even when not addressing queerness directly, the look away we perform, intentionally addressing the queer in an indirect or unclear way order to maintain respectability has a long history. Even the subject matter completely separate to these ideas is often one with ties, visible or not, to our communities and identity."
Anything else you would like to share about this work? This can be an important part of the process, sourcing materials, or research.
“‘Unsheathe!’ is a study of human as tool. By placing the body between the scabbard and fittings of a dagger, I pursue a self that is in the operation of making fate. I'm sure we're all familiar with the homoerotic trope and desire of the blade, and I use this work to begin to unpack exactly what these fantasies stem from. In my research I've found that one of the key factors in homoerotic blade fantasies is agency. Queer folk are often denied the right to force, and the agency to make our lives as we see fit, especially regarding our relationships and communities. This work is an embodiment of the queer desire for power and agency, the ability to transform ourselves into the makers of our own destiny."
"Unsheathe!", Sterling silver, fine silver, amethyst, cord, 2'6" x 3" x .25", 2023