Willson Center Distinguished Artist Lecture

Speaker Name: Aaron Decker
University or Organization: Independent Artist, Scholar and Product Development and Design Manager, SHINOLA Detroit

The Jewelry and Metalwork area is pleased to welcome Aaron Decker as a Willson Center Distinguished Artist. Decker’s lecture, ‘Queer Monsters Hiding Under Your Skin,’ and enameling workshop are also supported in part by The Ann Orr Morris Memorial Fund and the Phi Beata Heata student organization.

10/26/21 11am – 5pm – Enameling Workshop at Thomas Street Art Complex jewelry and metalwork studios 

10/27/21 – Lecture at Lamar Dodd School of Art

‘Queer Monsters Hiding Under Your Skin.’

Aaron Decker’s work pulls together memories from his military childhood and queers them with enameled toy references. Layers of glass, metal, and color reflect back the moments, objects, and queer undercurrents of an artist struggling with the love of violent objects and the mediation of the masculinity that comes with them. In his recent work, ‘it’s (not) all fun and games, Decker takes his childhood association of clowns as figures to be terrified of, and of becoming, and marries them with military tanks, monsters, and toys. In his work he asks the questions, ‘what am I afraid of?’ and ‘what am I hiding?.’

An accomplished poet as well as an immensely inventive enamelist, Aaron Decker creates wearable forms that are both personally referential and resoundingly universal. Much of the layered imagery in his work has to do with childhood memories – some pleasant and reassuring, others, darker and more foreboding. Raised in a military family, he moved frequently while growing up and came out to his family when he was 16. As the gay son of military father, he grew up an outsider, developing deeply ambivalent feelings about the US military and its aggressive ideals. Many of the allusions in his work (medals, planes, camouflage, etc.) reference this military context and reflect Decker’s astute critical stance.

Decker spent much of his childhood in Alaska and Maine. He attended the University of Southern Maine for three years (2007-2010), studying writing. While there, his beloved grandfather, a highly skilled craftsman who specialized in clocks and watch repairs, passed away. To honor him, Decker enrolled in a jewelry class at the Maine College of Art with Sharon Portelance who became a mentor and encouraged Decker to pursue his interest in metals and enameling. He studied at MECA for two Years (2010-2012) earning a BFA in 2012. After graduating he worked in Portland for the goldsmith Patty Daunis. Later in 2012 he received a Windgate Fellowship which allowed him to travel abroad to Estonia, Portugal and the Czech Republic. He returned to Maine with a deeper commitment to his field. He subsequently met Iris Eichenberg who encouraged him to apply to the graduate program at Cranbrook. He did and was awarded his MFA there in 2015. Following his studies at Cranbrook he received a prestigious Mercedes Benz award allowing him to spend the summer in Berlin. Upon his return to the US he settled outside Detroit where he works for the SHINOLA Company and maintains an independent studio practice.

The Willson Center Distinguished Artist or Lecturer program supports individual faculty or interdisciplinary groups in bringing leading thinkers and practitioners to campus in support of ongoing and innovative research projects. https://willson.uga.edu