Yuting Gao

MA Candidate

Bio

Yuting Gao was born and raised in China and is currently living and studying Jewelry and Metalsmithing as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Yuting started her study of jewelry in 2014, with an undergraduate gems tone technology program in Shanghai, China, where she learned sustainable jewelry making practices. She likes to design jewelry for people because she wants adornment to carry with their stories. Since completing her undergraduate degree, she has worked for several jewelry industry companies, from online to offline, and designed customized jewelry.

As the only child due to the One-Child Policy in China, she is really close to her parents. She chose to be apart from her family and came to study jewelry in America, because she wanted to meet people from different cultural backgrounds. She would like to contribute her multicultural experience to art teaching position after graduation.

Yuting Gao on Wix

Artist Statement

Living alone in a foreign country made me miss the closeness of living with my parents in Shanghai. This series of wearable jewelry is inspired by memories of home. One of my family rituals is doing laundry together and hanging the wet clothing outside of the windows. I have captured that ritual and confronted my loneliness by making jewelry that connects me to myself or two people to each other.

The scale of the jewelry represents the distance between my family and me. To counter this feeling, the work I make requires people to be in proximity. While two people wear the piece, the moveable connections allow them to change their distance, but tethers them together.

The brass wire forms are an abstraction of the steel rod structure which each family uses to hang their clothes. Red is the color mainly used in traditional Chinese architecture. Usually we think of black or dark colors when talking about loneliness. I chose red powder-coating because I want to evoke the color of luck and good fortune in China.