Caitie Sellers, US

US artist Caitie Sellers received her BFA in Craft/Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. She has spent the last ten years moving between Virginia, Guatemala, Montana, North Carolina, and Texas learning technique and gathering inspiration for her artwork based on the urban landscape. Her work ranges from one of a kind small sculpture to limited production wearable jewelry and is exhibited internationally. Caitie was an Artist-in-Residence at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in 2014 and a recent a co-director/resident artist at Clamp Light Artist Studios and Gallery in San Antonio, Texas. Recent exhibitions include “Placeholder,” a solo exhibition at the Ornamental Metals Museum in Memphis, TN and “Shared Concerns” a traveling exhibition most recently shown at the Radiant Pavilion Contemporary Jewelry Festival in Melbourne, Australia. She maintains her studio in The Elevator Collective, a multidisciplinary artist studio she founded in 2015 in Richmond, VA.

Caitie’s work uses traditional silversmithing techniques to create work that revolves around a unique combination of alloys and industrial materials. Caitie fuses fine copper mesh from an industrial manufacturer with sterling silver as the base for most of her pieces, using techniques she developed during a residency at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Using these materials creates an effect that provides solid planes with transparency, allowing her to play with dimension and layers.

Caitie is fascinated with the hidden workings of cities -- beautiful, efficient design that is hidden beneath pavement and brick. Using transparent mesh allows her to show both the outer skin and the guts of a place. These pieces show the basic building blocks of a city, something assembled by ancient and forgotten hands, juxtaposed with modern additions and renovations. She is interested in showing the cycles of urban growth and decay.

Caitie Sellers uses many other techniques to recreate infrastructure in miniature. She weaves thin gauge sterling silver wire to create chain link fence, and uses filigree techniques to make tiny guard rails and brick walls. Granulation techniques are used to build silt and gravel. Caitie coils and fuses fine wire to create powerlines and cable. She combines these simple overlooked structures with 18 karat gold to symbolize their real value in our lives.

For our exhibition, Caitie has created 5 wall pieces that exemplify the style and skill she uses in making her wearable pieces. Each detailed piece casts intricate shadows on the wall , which to us, are almost as beautiful and interesting as the pieces themselves.