About

Sarah Montagnoli is a jeweler and metalsmith based in Philadelphia, PA. She received her BFA from Moore College of Art & Design (2018) and moved on to pursue her MFA and Teaching Certification at Tyler School of Art & Architecture (2021). Since receiving her Masters, she has been teaching jewelry at her alma mater as well as at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. When not teaching or seated at her bench, she enjoys time with her cats, collecting small trinkets, and wandering in the rain.

My practice derives from my compulsion to adorn the body with objects that tell of my views and experiences of the world. Practicing the craft of jewelry and metalsmithing over the past decade has become the medium through which I create these adornments. I took my time in discovering the broader aspects of making before honing the traditional methods and hand fabrication processes that currently drive my practice. I create pillowed metal forms that act as vessels for encapsulating fragments of myself and my past, to be observed from a removed perspective. Escaping the restraints of shame that ensnared my childhood, replacing sensations of joy and pleasure – no matter how innocent – with guilt, condemned my desires as filthy and shameful. Through the lens of my adult self, I consider how shame, denial, and desire can be the source of pleasure through control, restraint, and restriction. Seeking pleasure and comfort through "toy" based forms, I refabricate these moments lost in my childhood. Evoking sensations, memories, and emotions through tactile experiences, I am in control of these experiences; replaying these sensations, and commanding these moments by rewriting them to soothe myself, or to give them form; begging them to stay with me and not slip through the cracks of my memory; dissolving into nothing.