By Mckenna Graham • Photos by Matt Johnson
“This is a Columbian mammoth tooth I recovered while scuba diving in Venice, Florida,” says Theresa Applegate, handing me what appears to be a bulbous navy-colored rock. “So,” she continues, “not a wooly mammoth. Columbian mammoths are a little larger and not nearly as furry.” We stand in the basement of her home, and the tall glass case from which she has extracted the ancient molar is filled with other curiosities too- fossilized sea shells, small animal skulls, a copious amount of shark teeth and, presumably, more bicuspids from long-deceased creatures of this earth.
Applegate is a metalsmith who produces wearable works of art, but it might be equally fair to call her an explorer, a collector, and even a bit of a scientist. Her work utilizes mold making and direct botanical castings to capture the ephemeral artifacts of the natural world. For example, cataloging a tender sage leaf by casting it in sterling silver and forming it into a ring, before it begins to wilt, Jewelry rarely provokes existential questions, but Applegate’s work points to the fleeting nature of beauty and finds loveliness in the grotesque.
Hanging out with her for any amount of time will lead you to learn about things you’ve never considered before- like, do raccoon penises have bones? The answer is yes and she has one on the wall of her studio. Or perhaps, do sharks lose their teeth? Yes, they lose about 20,000 teeth in a lifetime. Last year, Applegate raised over four hundred monarch butterflies on stalks of milkweed she kept in her basement, releasing the insects once they hadcompleted their pupation cycle and were ready to fend for themselves. However, she admits things began to get a bit out of hand towards the end as caterpillars demonstrated their skills as escape artists and roved her basement freely…so now her current brood of Pipevine swallowtails are being reared outdoors. It’s truly impossible to look at her jewelry or talk to her without catching the contagious curiosity inherent in her work.
Applegate attended The Savannah College of Art and Design with the intent of becoming an architect. However, she committed a classic “bait and switch” as she calls it, never taking an architecture course and instead falling firmly into the role of jewelry-maker. It wasn’t until an artist residency in Maine during 2012 that her work pivoted to its current direction.
“It was this transformative time where I started putting snake skin under resin- like roadkill snake, so it had a little bit of a yuck factor,” recalls Applegate, “It was this epiphany moment where I started making things that I thought were really beautiful and interesting but also kind of a little icky so that the jewelry had a story behind it… the snake skin didn’t look gross. It was blue, almost like a gemstone, so wearing it was like having a dirty little secret.”
Her current collection of designs, available exclusively at KMAC’s Museum Shop on Main Street in downtown Louisville, includes delicate mangrove bracelets, a sterling silver bat skull necklace, and dendritic agate toggle among others.
“It’s the texture,” Applegate says, explaining how she is drawn to her source materials, “Like macro-textures if you will. I like zooming in and looking at things really close, like mushroom gills and spores, or a bark texture or the repetition of the way little seeds develop compacted in a pod.”
One piece of particular significance to Applegate is a mangrove necklace. After taking up scuba diving in 2017, she began to use found treasures from these excursions as elements in her practice. The necklace, inspired by this coastal tree, is composed of a moss agate pendant, a direct casting of a mangrove leaf, and estate diamond and chain made of numerous castings of mangrove buds, arranged in a graduated way. It’s the kind of splendor nature provides all around us but that goes mostly unnoticed until cast in precious metals. The short-lived nature of her material meant that Applegate had to drive fourteen hours home and cast the buds immediately the next day. In addition to its beauty, she notes the importance of the mangrove tree for preventing erosion and providing refuge for the aquatic creatures that share its ecosystem, and somehow these sentiments feel as though they’ve been translated into the jewelry as well.
“As a jewelry artist and design professional myself, I was impressed with the quality and depth that Theresa’s work embodies,” says Julia Comer, Director of Retail Experience at KMAC. “I consider her to be one of the best contemporary jewelry artists in our area. She could teach me a thing or two about the skill, time, and energy that is required to be a true jewelry artist who transcends everyday life into art. I am enormously enthusiastic about having her work in the KMAC Shop!”
For those interested in learning more about metal smithing, casting and jewelry making, Applegate offers workshops in an individual or group setting. These classes of up to four people generally take place one evening a week, over a five-week period. Also available are intensive 3 day workshops. Students do not need previous experience and classes are small enough to be tailored to each individual’s goals. More information can be found on her website at theresaapplegate.com if you’d like to try your hand at turning often-overlooked bits of life into meaningful, wearable art.
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