Bryan Parnham



Bryan Parnham

About The Artist

Bryan Parnham •
Jewelry • WHOLESALE AVAILABLE

Bryan Parnham graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013. He was awarded the Core Fellowship at Penland School of Craft in 2016. Parnham has been a resident artist or lecturer at various universities and institutions across the country. In 2020 As Resident Artist in Cortona, Italy his solo exhibition 'Cos�� Qui, What�s Here' was hung at Museo dell�Accademia Etrusca and again in 2021 at in Athens, Georgia. He was recently featured in the Museum of Art and Design show MAD about Jewelry. Bryan Parnham work is predominantly jewelry, fabricated from sterling silver. Focused on flatness, formalism, and the ontology of images, the pieces use pastiche and trompe l'oeil to insert unengaged imagery into the lives of the jewelry's wearer. These images are produced with photopolymer and electrolytic etching.



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Q&A with the Artist

Tell us how your work is made.

The images used are sourced from the internet, cell phone pictures, screenshots, thrift store salvage, archives, or shot myself on film. Regardless of origin they are altered and edited digitally and printed as negatives for exposure on photopolymer. Images are electrolytically etched into sheets of silver using cupric nitrate, a safer alternative to caustic acids. The etched plates are used in the fabrication of individual works and finally treated with automotive primer, patina, and lacquer.


What makes you passionate about the medium you work with?

Metal is generally considered either a material for utility or decoration. Steel is the icon of industry, gold and silver the epitome of embellishment. My interest in metal comes from the space between these two outliers. The history of metals has given us the printed word through lead type, reproducible images in print plates, and the ability to capture an instant of light though silver nitrate photography. It is in acknowledgement of these scientific and cultural institutions that I use metal as a graphic medium.

What is something unique about you or your practice?

When an image of my work is reproduced it is an image of an object of an image. They are entirely flat but on occasion have the appearance of volume.