🔨 Kindred Forms: A Tribute to Sharon Church

I only recently discovered the work of Sharon Church (1948–2022)—and yet, it felt like something in her work already knew me.

Church was a studio jeweler and educator whose materials spoke in hushed tones: boxwood, antler, bone, silver. She carved delicate botanical forms—vines, wings, claws, flowers—that were neither ornamental nor ornamentalist. They were symbols, carved stories, emotionally resonant objects. Her jewelry didn’t shout. It whispered, remembered, and endured.

She came of age during a time when women were still fighting for recognition in metalsmithing and academia. Trained at Skidmore College and the School for American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology, Church entered the field quietly, with focus and determination. In the 1970s she began a long and influential teaching career at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she mentored generations of metalsmiths, especially women and LGBTQ+ artists. Her studio practice and teaching philosophy were deeply intertwined—she believed in craft as care, and that making was a form of both communication and survival.

In 1993, Sharon’s husband died suddenly. This loss marked a transformation in her work. Forms that had once been elegant and mysterious became more emotionally raw—still graceful, but haunted. Wilted flowers. Sprouting pods. Jewelry that mourned and bloomed in the same breath.

She once said:

“I don’t draw a line between technique and meaning—they are the same thing.”

That quote struck me with full force.

I’ve written extensively about how Craft serves as a healing modality—how materials, movement, and embodied practice can support grief, stress recovery, and emotional repair. In my own experience, metalsmithing has often been a way to shape emotion into form—to alchemize pain, presence, and memory through molten metal and hand tools. I work with fire, carving tools, and gravity. So did Sharon. Though I never met her, and only encountered her work posthumously, I felt something like kinship.

There’s a term I use often in my teaching and research: materiality, identity, and transformation. Sharon Church’s legacy sits at the intersection of all three. Her materials were raw and humble. Her forms held personal and symbolic weight. And her process transformed loss into something wearable—something remembered.

We often think of legacy in terms of prestige or fame. But Sharon Church’s power was in her presence—in the quiet steadiness of her work, the precision of her hand, and the generosity of her teaching. Her jewelry doesn’t merely exist. It listens. It holds space. And it invites us to do the same.

Thank you, Sharon, for carving a path where quiet stories live.
You are remembered.