Artist/photographer Eileen Keane is Machine Dazzle’s best friend and has been his inspiration for decades. By day she is a healer, advocate for animals, and equestrian; by night she is ALL vintage glamour. Join associate curator Barbara Paris Gifford for a conversation with Keane about the jewelry Machine makes exclusively for her. In addition to sharing stories of their sweet friendship and glamorous outings together, Keane will discuss how Machine chooses certain stones for her and has created jewelry gifts to mark the important moments in her life. Unlike anything he has created for the stage, Machine’s jewelry is romantic, sometimes dangerous, show-stopping, and certainly not every day.

This program is presented during  New York City Jewelry Week (Nov 14–22, 2022) in conjunction with the exhibitions Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle and Jewelry Stories. Ticket holders are invited to visit the exhibitions prior to the program.

About the artist

Eileen Keane spent a decade in Japan where she studied traditional arts, including washi paper making, wood kiln-fired ceramic art, and printmaking. Her background in lithography led to an apprenticeship in photography and exhibitions in Nagoya, Japan, featuring site-specific installations of photographic portraiture printed on her handmade paper. As a photographer, she is dedicated to black-and-white imagery produced with analog equipment; she uses a 1969 Leica camera and maintains a darkroom where she executes every step of the photographic process by hand. One of her current projects is an ongoing series documenting her friends’ lives as performance artists.