Born and raised in Massachusetts, Kim Nogueira is an automaton maker and studio jeweler, whose degree in Sociology from Smith College supports the thought-based explorations that undergird her wearable narrative art practice. Nogueira now lives on Saint John Island, and the collection “East of Hercules”—her first—was inspired by the life-changing experience of walking alone on the same secluded beach every day for several years. An unexpected interior pilgrimage resulted from this daily stroll; she was encouraged to craft a visual language in her studio that would embrace the interconnectedness of all things and celebrate the imagination as a powerful mythopoetic tool for critical thinking and change. To create the jewelry frameworks for her metaphysical stories, she employs the traditional fabrication techniques of the goldsmith and enamelist. For the decorative elements, she painstakingly arranges minuscule fragments of antique and contemporary imagery and text into dream-like, intuitive decals, which are fused forever in glass.
