Hayley Nolte

Charles City, IA

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Towers of tins line my studio walls, testament to post consumer obsolescence and an art practice that spans twenty years of obsessive deconstruction and reinvention. My artistic tin forays have been 2D for years while the tiny offcuts and scraps have stirred in my dreams, demanding attention. My zero-waste curiosity has more recently begun folding and bending, rolling and wrapping, reversing and riveting, seaming and soldering, inverting and converting my stash of morsels and tidbits into ethical adornment that is (mostly) guilt free. Scaffolding these remnants with stainless steel wire has allowed me to explore a 3D realm that my day dreams have been navigating ahead of me. Designing hands on at the jewelry bench is a constant interplay between discovery and remembering: imaginative intersections juggling the diverse influences of my winding life path on the three continents I’ve called home on this small fragile planet. As “trashion” becomes a necessity not a trend in our strive for sustainability, I am continually motivated to keep mining my private stash of trash for meaning and value, shaping my shiny shards to enclose tiny intriguing spaces with reclaimed color and expand them with hope.