Biography

Devon Clark is a Canadian art jeweller who started designing and creating accessories in 1996. She began her training at the Kootenay School of the Arts Center of Craft and Design in Nelson, BC, where she completed a 3 year diploma program in the Jewellery and Small Object Design department in 1999. She continued her education at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Alberta, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the Jewellery and Metals program in 2002. 

Devon has been represented by some of North Americas's top Craft galleries, and has also exhibited in the USA, France, Germany, and Portugal. She currently works out of her studio in Calgary, Alberta.

Artist's Statement

I make jewellery by hand. Some of it is considered fine jewellery, some of it is considered Contemporary art jewellery, but often it is somewhere in between. I use an eclectic range of ethically resourced and local materials including precious and semi-precious metals and gemstones, plastic, paper, fabric, and found objects. I love detail and have always been drawn to texture, nature, fashion, and patterns.

Objects and parts that no longer serve their original purpose intrigue me. As do the sentimental narratives that surround them. Like old bits of inherited, broken, or discarded jewellery that I can modify, restore, and integrate into my own designs. Or salvaged metal from my scrap bin, an invaluable supply of failed construction attempts, abandoned ideas, and discarded past works waiting to be reclaimed and re-shaped into something new.

My work fuses an assortment of materials and eras together, often using mismatched yet complimentary design elements. Old narratives are layered upon new ones, and imperfect beauty is celebrated anew through melted surfaces, blemishes in pearls, visible frameworks, exposed joints, and intentionally empty stone settings. My more conceptual pieces explore contrasts in relationships between the forgotten and the remembered, the discarded and the cherished, the broken and the repaired, and ultimately, the worthless and the valued.