Mary Pearse Reviewed in Metalsmith Magazine

Associate Professor Mary Hallam Pearse was part of the invitational exhibition DOMESTIC MATTERS: The Uncommon Apron at the Peter Valley School of Craft in Layton, New Jersey this past fall. Metalsmith Magazine featured a review of Pearse’s piece Leaded in Volume 40, No. 1.

The exhibition DOMESTIC MATTERS: The Uncommon Apron presented a group of forty-seven women artists exploring the apron as an icon, often socially and politically charged, for broader themes of domesticity, femininity, family history and personal experience. The exhibition focuses on work in craft media made specifically for the show. It makes reference to historic connections to occupation, community, and household roles. In Metalsmith magazine, Rebecca McNamara comments, “One of the most puzzling works on view is Pearse’s Leaded, a lead apron with a frilly-looking border, its waistband hand-stitched with red silk. Using a vintage sewing pattern to create the form, the artist replaced the pocket in the upper left with the shape of a handgun.” McNamara also comments on the shocking presence of the gun embedded in an apron for domestic matters, posing questions she as a viewer, also pondered.  

Mary Hallam Pearse explores in her ongoing work how jewelry has functioned historically as a marker of status, class, wealth, and a record of human experience. Pearse is the Area Chair of the Jewelry and Metalwork area at the Lamar Dodd School of Art.