About Kristina

Meal Ticket Jewelry started with eggs. As a career science educator having left the classroom, and with a newly minted M.F.A. degree, Kristina Denzel Bickford found herself in the classroom again, as a long-term substitute teaching some very lucky kids who had access to a metals shop. One of the very first things she made while reorienting herself with the torch was a sterling silver and brass egg.

Kristina was first introduced to metalsmithing as a junior in high school and returned to the medium sporadically throughout a career as a science educator and adventures in parenting when she found spaces where she could access a shop. Every time, her love of metals was rekindled, so after her sub position ended, Kristina finally made some space in her studio and set up a torch to keep her at the jeweler’s bench (a repurposed wooden desk).

Art-making is an act of faith - - that your ideas are worthy of manifesting physically, that they will make others feel something. There is no guarantee of acceptance into a show, a residency, or a collection. Meal Ticket Jewelry is a way of making objects that explore Kristina’s artistic sensibilities in a more playful, approachable way. It is an opening for her to create without the strings attached that comes with the pressures of “capital A artmaking”. As Alexander Calder did with his jewelry-making, Kristina hopes to make work that speaks to a more playful nature by making objects that, though made for adornment, hold their own as pieces of art in their own right.

Your purchase of a piece of jewelry from Meal Ticket is just that - - a meal ticket for an artist so that she can keep making art while putting eggs on the table at home. Thank you for being here and thank you for supporting artists.

———————————————————————

More information about Kristina’s sculpture and installation work can be found at her artist website and she shares about her work on her artist instagram.