Home Sweet Home, 2013

Temporary public art installation, Kingston, NY. Wood, auto paint, hardware. 23 x 4 feet.

Monograms, artisan signatures, and names personal, familial, and romantic are not uncommon findings in jewelry’s long history. The script style nameplate is a unique cultural artifact that has its roots in early black hip hop culture of the late 1980s. The nameplate necklace was and still is a means of self-proclamation, declaration, and individuality—perhaps even a political revolt against mainstream white culture. In the late nineties we were introduced to Carrie Bradshaw, the heroine of television’s Sex in the City, who wore a personalized nameplate. Since then, this necklace has been absorbed into the collective pop culture consciousness. 

Home Sweet Home heaps on more layers to this already laden object. Combining tropes of signage, namely, the iconic Hollywood sign, and sentimental language, Home Sweet Home reflects and celebrates a broader understanding of identity. We all have a relationship to home and to its many connotations. Home can mean different things to different people—a building, a place, a family, a person. As our personal definitions of what home means changes throughout our lives, so does our definition of who we are.