Artist of the Month Monique Rancourt at deCordova Sculpture Park

Monique Rancourt, one of the newest members of the Metalwerx faculty, is February Artist of the Month at the venerable deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Mass. A reception celebrating Monique’s work will be held Sunday, February 2, from 2 to 4 pm.

Monique teaches weekly beginning and intermediate jewelry making classes and workshops at Metalwerx. Additionally, she juggles a demanding schedule of more than a dozen trade shows annually, while hand fabricating every single piece of jewelry she sells.

As a young woman, Monique dabbled in body adornment. “I had ideas in my head of things that I wanted but didn’t exist, so I started making them,” she said. She sewed, knitted, and tinkered with metal wire, but realized her technical skills were not up to her artistic vision. When she decided to fulfill her dreams of becoming an artist, she knew it was time to go to school.

She quit her retail job of a dozen years and to save money, returned to her parents’ home in Connecticut. Within a year, her portfolio was ready. She applied to both the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology, was accepted at both, went with her first choice, and headed to Boston.

Monique’s art is inspired by the body adornment traditions of Africa and the Pacific Islands. Her early work was more literal, incorporating tribal elements such as hair, animal teeth, and feathers. She came to love the work of the Norwegian modernist silversmith Tone Vigeland, and the large sculptures and body art of the German artist Rebecca Horn.

These days the majority of her pieces are mostly all precious metal. She is an art jeweler and everything in her product lines is handmade–never from a mold or cast, and every piece is always slightly different.

“I am constantly making new things. When I first started doing this, I would get stuck in an idea. I had to be reproducing, and I stopped making new things for a while,” she said. “Now I don’t do that. If I get an idea I just make it. I want to keep re-inventing the wheel.”

Belt Buckle by Monique Rancourt

Maintaining a heavy schedule of trade shows has helped her make connections that led to the residency at deCordova, and the teaching job at Metalwerx. Jewelry is a very competitive medium, she said, because there are so many different types: goldsmiths, silversmiths, beaders, art jewelers, and all the categories within jewelry. She continues to apply to new venues to showcase her work. “It’s intense, because it is so competitive, but it motivates me to make new things, to really stand out.”

Monique previously taught jewelry lessons for four years in her private studio. At Metalwerx, she has access to every tool she could possibly need, but her teaching style is to show students how much they can do with just a flexshaft, a torch, and a minimum of tools. “The students there keep me on my toes,” she said.

If you don’t catch Monique at her celebration February 2, there are still seats available the following weekend, February 8-9, in her workshop on making custom belt buckles. Students will design and construct a multi-layered brass buckle and practice piercing, riveting, etching and soldering.

 

To register, click here or call Metalwerx at 781-891-3854.

 

–by Yleana Martinez