BIO

Lucas Pointon is a Pittsburgh born artist currently living in Madison, Wisconsin. For the past three years, he has taught both beginning and advanced jewelry design and metalsmithing courses for the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Since then, Lucas works as a professional goldsmith for a local company’s store and continues to teach at various private studios.

Artist Statement 2024

My new series of works is inspired by Medieval reliquaries, containers that traditionally held the relic of a saint. I am interested in the ways that we venerate the dead and living. Within my work, the cast silver American cockroach serves as a modern surrogate for a relic. We are living in a time of cheap manufactured goods and a love for new things that quickly become trash, and in our hypocrisy, we destroy the environment and label creatures such as cockroaches as dirty and detestable. In fact, they are considered the garbage collectors of terrestrial ecosystems and participate in the recycling of human waste. My reliquary jewelry illuminates these once living detritivores and, I hope, directs the viewers’ moral compass in waste management and environmental protection.

My art jewelry is, in essence, venerating the breakdown of the natural recycling process by hosting the cockroach ironically in a suspended state (cast in silver) -- an agent of recycling unable to be recycled by other cockroaches. This becomes a beautiful metaphor for the “king of trash” to serve as a symbol of our human folly and remind us of what is precious about our temporality.

For inquiries into artwork titles, materials list, fabrication processes, and works for sale, please contact Lucas Pointon directly either by email, or phone. Thank you.

Email - lucmp06@gmail.com

Phone – 724-841-1650