John Parkins

About the Artist

John Parkins is a Baltimore based artist. His experience buying and selling antique, vintage, and discarded objects educates his artistic practice. Rather than add to the existing material surplus that inundates our world, he recycles by mining metal from unwanted silver heirlooms, housewares, and cutlery. A background in fine art and painting evokes modern and minimalist forms with strong, understated compositions. John creates at the Baltimore Jewelry Center, a communal studio and education space for metalsmiths.

Artist's Statement

Statement Each of my pieces comes from repurposing precious metal, whether household, heirloom, discarded or abandoned into precious works that belie the beginnings. I find unwanted pieces of sterling, brass and other found objects to create emotional works. The process of gathering materials, metaling the metal and transformation is a physical manifestation of my personal journey of healing and overcoming obstacles and challenges in my life and the world around me. The act of creating from unwanted and discarded items is intensely personal and therapeutic as well as creative. Each object I make contains a piece of who and where I am at that moment of my life. I utilize destruction methods of creation to form these new works, burning away temporary materials like cardboard and cutting up and melting silverware into new ingots. In both these processes, fire takes old materials and creates new art from it. My forms retain some of the raw and rough edges that speak to their creative process. Cracks, scaling, scratches and holes are left with edges to highlight the upfront and earnest process that creates the work.