Wisdom Ring
1989
Sterling silver, human wisdom tooth
🙛 GOLD MEDAL WINNER 🙙
1990 Scholastic Art Awards
Jewelry & Metasmithing category
I made this piece in high school after having my wisdom teeth out, and submitted it as a joke to the Scholastic Art Awards along with two other pieces I thought would actually impress the judges. Well, while the two serious pieces failed to award, this ring wound up winning on the state level and subsequently winning a Gold Medal at the national judging in New York. It then went on to sit on display with the other winning pieces in Chicago for a month. It wasn't until sixteen years later that the rest of me finally made it to Chicago, on the occasion of my cousin's wedding--I always found it amusing that my DNA had been to Chicago but that I hadn't!
I of course took the ring back with me when I went, as seen in the second photo in front of Chicago's famous Cloud Gate (aka The Bean). As an added bonus, that's my dad in the lower-left corner of the photo, and the cluster of three people in the mid-ground are my brother, my mother and my sister-in-law (L-R). Present but not visible is my niece (but you can see the shadow of her stroller).