Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacqueline Yajing Yao. Them and their team share their story with us below:
Jacqueline Yao Yajing (China, working in the US) Yao majored in physical training (tennis) during her undergraduate studies because tennis was one of her favorite sports. After graduating and working for a jewelry company for two years, she found something she loved and could spend her life doing. Because of her passion for art and jewelry, she decided to study abroad. In March, Yao received her Master of Fine Arts in Jewelry from Savannah College of Art and Design, and in April, she joined TIFFANY & Co. as a diamond setter. She cherishes and enjoys her daily work and is on the road to jewelry exploration. The combination of interrogation and empathy is something that’s been with me from the very beginning.
I grew up in a progressive and loving family. Both my parents were extremely free-thinking. My mother was adventurous. She gave me total freedom within an environment to express myself. I always treated everything with a kind of joyfulness, and I can feel the beauty it brings me. This is soft power that I felt after growing up and understanding about life in general. It is beautiful happiness. I would like to reward this kind of feeling. From a kid, I was interested in how people behave differently in different spaces. Watching the world from the sidelines, I was fascinated to see their various stories. It’s like being outside of it and to be able to think from an objective point of view.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I am a very optimistic and stubborn person. Most of the time the difficulties to me it’s OK. But it is a journey that takes time and effort. I spent about two years learning basic metalsmith techniques before coming to America to study. In the beginning, I had band-aids all over my hands every day because I was not skilled. In graduate school, we explored different materials to find the concepts that best represented us. I homemade paper, grew crystals and tried clay. Each exploration was like opening a new field, researching as much information as possible, and experimenting countless times before I could understand its properties and adapt it to develop and recreate it, etc. The process is incredible, but the feeling is fantastic every time I finally make something. Ultimately, I wanted to return to the eternal metal the most. Inspired by my professor, I developed my series by combining some basic techniques through lengthy research and repeated experiments.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My goal is to create long-lasting jewelry and objects that aren’t just roughly beautiful but that also have a soul passed on from generation to generation. Continuously seeking the perfect balance between meaning, beauty, and function while cherishing the heritage of handmaking, I create work that expresses my inner thoughts in the best possible way. Jewelry expresses a possibility that few observers have ever noticed: its ability to touch people. I want to use a simple way to express complex thoughts, and I believe jewelry made from our hands can build a special relationship with both jeweler and wearer. When the finished piece meets an audience or is worn, another process starts.
When the image in my mind or the expression of my inner emotions can be shaped by my hands little by little, this beauty and the process of selecting each tool, each action, is like having a conversation with them, and finally, it becomes something with a soul. Ultimately, design is a bridge, a frame for life. Contemporary jewelry is a kind of visual art practice breaking the limits of what it can be. For me, contemporary jewelry is like language. It’s a sharp way to communicate, to express our ideas. Jewelry is not only a fact or what we see but what we imagine. The creation of jewelry is a type of artwork meant to remind us of experiences or a memory that drove us to buy or create the piece. Art can be considered spiritual and metaphysical, contributing to raising the level of genius above a project’s content. My projects want to express the same content, asking the viewer to review and solve problems rather than giving specific answers. My work tends to think about the soul rather than offer medicine to solve it.
My work is about space, mental space, headspace, and comfortable emotional space. It is a space to focus and allow reflection. Space creates a void where we can develop the aesthetics of our emotions. I love the words “Unexpected Pleasure.” It is a wonderful and beautiful thing to feel the unknown and experience the unpredictable pleasure, which for me is the greatest joy and hope in the small but real happiness of life. I don’t know what will happen next, but I will think about it—maybe I will be attracted by the smell of a cup of coffee at the corner of the road and then walk into the store to enjoy it the next time.
One of the qualities that distinguish my work is how we experience a space, how we feel in a current moment to satisfy the subconscious. For example, when people practice Yoga, they are familiar with some keywords: relax, take a deep breath, close your eyes, imagine a beautiful picture, and experience the peace and beauty of the moment. Whenever they practice this relaxation mediation, people can become relaxed and are full of energy.
The subconscious is so essential to my practice. I think everybody has it. You don’t have to have the space that I have; you don’t have to have the space that others had. My example of space may stem from this notion of self-reflection, but self-reflection is not always seen as something like yoga or meditation of others; it’s a different type of environment they put themselves in. No matter the type of space, it is essential that everyone create their own. I am a visual person; by that I mean I prefer to express my thoughts visually because I think it’s so simple and straightforward but also very complicated. This kind of contradiction is like my pieces; anyone can see it, but maybe it is not always understandable. There are some stories or emotions that I will add to a work during the making process and present them in some texture. For me, this is enough.
The processes for making my pieces are complicated. But while it’s complicated, the form I choose to make is simple. The process of creating a simplified form is rather complicated because the complexity of illustrating the process or textures in a very minimal form is also complicated—I wanted to create a very minimal form to illustrate the process or the textures that I’m creating.
We discover the world through our senses—something that touches our skin gives us memories. The objects we spend time with, we can tell what they are when we touch them. Their texture, temperature, weight, and hardness give them their uniqueness. Once we experience them through the contrast of the senses, the material is more convincing and more compelling. Understanding the material is best done by comparison. Our senses are such that we understand roughness by contrasting it with smoothness. Thus, the silver wire is a very metallic band that is durable but feels solid and timeless, offsetting hardness and coolness.
However, silver wire is something that we don’t investigate in great detail. I use silver wire as my main material—Sterling silver wire, Argentium silver wire, gold-filled silver wire, fine silver wire—silver wire is a beautiful material for form expression. For me, the design process is related to how I see, what I see, and how I translate it into metal. So, it is less about the aesthetics or the appearance, although that is still present, but much more about how to create a space that makes people feel better than when they arrived. I mainly rely on these materials because they match all expectations. It’s all about well-being. That means that when people go into it, they don’t know why they feel the way they feel, but it’s actually all been orchestrated.
The silver evokes in me a sense of softness and a soft touch but is it is still quite strong. I can compare the pieces to women: women are perceived to be vulnerable in some regards; however, we are the strongest. We are blessed with patience, humility, and tolerance. We have infinite possibilities, as does my work: I wanted everything to feel like it was of one. That it was breathing fully as an institution. It’s the act of weaving little bits of elements to make bigger things. I was always part of the visual brain but bringing a unique jewelry design voice to that very much embodied in my use of jewelry.
Ideas come in all kinds of ways.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jyjyjewelry.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacqueline.euvoce.studio/?hl=zh-cn
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100013232915629
Image Credits
The first one working in a studio photoed by Duo Shi All the jewelry-related photos Photo: Kazimir Skye Model: Blue. Jenna Matsumoto
