ABOUT
Luke Towne (b. 1996) is an artist and jeweler currently located in upstate New York. An early passion for chain-making planted the seed for his interest in jewelry- a vein he continues to follow through his more traditional work.
His artistic projects engage with ideas surrounding land and site, object history, and material processes. Through an often alchemical approach, he explores how materials and objects imbue formal, poetic, or even spiritual significance, as well as, the function of jewelry in strengthening the link between matter and meaning. While grounded in methods from metalsmithing and stone carving disciplines, his work reflects upon narratives emerging from and embedded within the surrounding landscape.
I grew up overturning stones to look for fossils in a creek bed outside my home in upstate New York. I felt stones marked with fossils and rounded by the flowing creek embodied a sense of place- their own histories briefly intersected with mine. My work bridges my curiosity of found objects with an exploration of the materiality of stone and metal as a response to the intangible qualities of objects, bodies and landscapes.
The fossil record is confused. Layer upon layer revealed through fragmented narratives of collisions and changes. Formations of particles, minerals, sediment and muck become mute metaphors for life- I hope I can convince you that dirt and stone themselves are alive.
Hardly a mere backdrop for activity, land is an entity, the force through which all things coalesce into form. Combined materials animate elements of land and site. The resulting object is simultaneously taken from, standing-in for and existing as the very landscape we encounter.
The land’s slow, continuous upheavals form and shape impressions on beings other than rock.