Lynn Batchelder
Lynn Batchelder is an interdisciplinary American artist, who navigates the space between 2 and 3 dimensions. Equally capable in both drawing and jewelry-making, she creates works that are more complex than their initial impression provides. Batchelder is impelled by the dichotomy between control and spontaneity, stating that “[she] is drawn to modes of working that are both careful yet inefficient…small moments of contrast…resulting in final forms and solutions that are just beyond [her] complete authority.”
Batchelder’s formal vocabulary is based in geometry—lines, grids, circles, squares, cylinders, and cubes—her jewelry informed by lines drawn on paper. She works in series. Sawing/Drawing is comprised of necklaces and brooches made from industrial steel, whose elements appear transparent due to multiple thin parallel cuts made with a jeweler’s saw. These works are irregular, imperfect, a result of their transmogrification from the graphic to the fabricated, while the intaglio prints in Fog are achieved through the process of engraving on copper plates. The brooches and necklaces in A Line in Space features electroforming, a technique perfectly suited to drawing in 3-dimensions, as it involves actual rendering with a brush and conductive paint onto handmade wax forms and then plating the “drawings” with copper.
Since 2016 Batchelder has been Assistant Professor of Art in the Metal Program at SUNY New Paltz, from which she received a MFA in Metal (2013). She has shown in many solo, duo, and group exhibitions, including One World, Gallery Loupe’s online exhibition memorializing the Covid-19 pandemic (2020); 40 Under 40: The Next Generation of American Metalsmiths, a juried exhibition at The Metal Museum, Memphis, TN (2019); denizen, SUNY New Paltz Metal Program, Hotel Chelsea, NYC, NYCJW (2018); and Talente, Internationale Handwerksmesse, Munich, Germany (2015). Her work has been represented in many publications, and she has received several awards, most prominently the Art Jewelry Forum International Artist Award (2016).
