CALL FOR ENTRY
FRESH:
Work that is happening now, challenging how we define the field of Jewelry & Metalsmithing.
CLEAN:
Objectively looking at how our practices intersect with environmental concerns and human health.
CREATING IN A FRACTURED WORLD
Many students and emerging artists today are navigating profound pressures like climate emergency, political instability, grief, burnout, financial strain, illness, caregiving, and more. What may look like “lack of motivation” is often something far more complex.
In a fractured world that asks artists to keep producing despite uncertainty and exhaustion, this exhibition asks a different question: what futures can be imagined through care, refusal, and collective making?
Community for Ethical Jewelry invites student jewelers, metalsmiths, and interdisciplinary makers to submit work for an exhibition exploring speculative futures through adornment and metal.
Drawing on the concept of speculative design, we are asking “what if?” instead of forecasting trends or promising solutions. This lens opens debate, and generates alternatives.
This exhibition invites you to create jewelry and objects that function as questions, fictions, artifacts, tools, dreams, warnings, portals, or possibilities. Your speculative future does not need to be polished or optimistic, but it must be true for you. Asking yourself “what if?” is not an act of blind optimism, rather, it is a practice of hope.
Consider the world you want to live in, and what future you refuse.
Our very best,
Chelsea Nanfelt Rowe (Exhibition Manager) and Cole Kamerick Alfelt-Eller (Student Committee)
A Letter from 2026 Students Jury:
So Fresh + So Clean 2026 JURORS
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Mary Hallam Pearse received her M.F.A. in Metal from SUNY New Paltz and a B.F.A. in Crafts with an emphasis in Jewelry and Metals from Kent State University. Her practice centers around the symbolic and emotive resonance of jewelry and potent materials and how they participate in culture. Shifting scale, moving from image to object to material conditions, her work dramatically changes directions prompted by life events. Pearse’s work has been selected for competitive exhibitions in museums and galleries both nationally and internationally and included in publications such as Metalsmith, Ornament and American Craft. Curatorial projects include Crafting History: Textiles, Metals and Ceramics at the University of Georgia, Parallels: Jonathan Wahl and Sondra Sherman, The Ring Shows: Then & Now and Putting the Band Back Together and Coming into View. She has been invited to present lectures and provide workshops at Penland, Anderson Ranch, Kent State University, East Carolina University and Humboldt State to name a few. She is currently professor of the jewelry and metalwork and Associate Director of Space and Technology at The Lamar Dodd School of Art in Athens, Georgia.
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Chelsea Nanfelt Rowe is an artist who transforms everyday materials
and detritus into jewelry. She is motivated to highlight the stories infused in and witnessed by
the things we surround ourselves with.She has her MFA in Craft/Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and now works as the Communication Specialist at SNAG Metalsmith and is Faculty in Little Rock, Arkansas. An advocate for sustainability in jewelry, Nanfelt Rowe is an RJM Artist Project Member and serves on the Advisory Council and Education Committee for Ethical Metalsmiths. Her work has been
exhibited nationally, most recently at Dransfield Jewelers, the Metal Museum, and the Steuben Gallery at Pratt Institute. She was also recognized with NYCJW’s 2025 One for the Future award.
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Cole Kamerick Alfelt-Eller is a jeweler, craftsperson and artist, currently pursuing an MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University. He received his BFA in Craft and Material Studies with a minor in Critical Theory from College for Creative Studies in 2023. In addition to metal, Cole works in performance, video, installation, and a variety of other mediums to create work concerned with social conditioning and the process of ornamentation. Cole is a member of the Tentative artist collective, Ethical Metalsmiths, and the Society of North American Goldsmiths.
Call For Entry Details
SUBMISSION DEADLINES:
Call for Entry deadline: May 15th
Notification of acceptance: July 1st
Exhibition Launch: September 1st
Eligibility
Applicants must be a current student-level member.
Membership eligibility:
You are eligible for Student membership if you have enrolled in a Jewelry or Metalsmithing related course at a high school, college, craft school, or workshop during the current year of student membership, OR if it has been less than 2 years since you graduated from a degree-granting program.
*For the 2026 exhibition, students must have graduated no earlier than June 2024.
Awards
Juror’s Award - $900
Resonance Award - $400
Speculative Futures Award - $400
BACK THIS YEAR!
Student Membership Scholarships
We are working to make Student Level Memberships affordable and will be granting a small number of scholarships to students who could benefit from the financial assistance, would like to apply to our student exhibition So Fresh + So Clean, and become members of the organization.
LIMITED TO FIRST-TIME STUDENT MEMBERS ONLY
Please know that the number of scholarships available is limited. We ask that only students who could not otherwise purchase a membership apply for the funding.
Scholarship recipients will be chosen from the pool of applicants via lottery.
SCHOLARSHIP APPLICATIONS DUE APRIL 1st, 2026
How to Apply
Students will submit all images and writing to the So Fresh + So Clean 2025 Application Form.
Application Requirements
Student status and school affiliation
Highest Degree title, Year received (or expected), Name of School, Country.
or
Non-Degree seeking, Name of School, Country.
Artist Statement: (200 words maximum)
Explain the inspiration or concept behind your work.
Responsibility Statement: (200 words maximum)
Please respond to one question from below:
How do you source your metals and other materials
How do you manage and minimize waste materials like metal scraps, chemical byproducts, and polishing compounds during production?
How might you design your work to be durable and timeless, ensuring it contributes to a more sustainable future for metalsmithing?
How do you participate in fostering a more sustainable future for the jewelry and metalsmithing field?
Image details
Title of Your Artwork, Year, Materials, Dimensions.
Type of object (neckpiece, brooch, vessel, sculpture etc)
Image Requirements
This is an ONLINE exhibition, so professional quality images are essential.
Image size must be:
1200 pixels (width), 300 resolution, .jpeg format
You may submit a maximum of 5 artworks,
with 1 full, and 1 detail image per artwork.
You may include up to 3 images of in-progress or studio shots that highlight your efforts in creating a responsible practice.
Images must be labeled in the following way:
Firstname_Lastname_title.jpg
Firstname_Lastname_title_detail.jpg
Firstname_Lastname_studio1.jpg
A Note to Educators:
We hope that educators will encourage this Call for Entry
in your courses and conversations with students this semester. To assist you with this, consider using
this collection of curriculum materials.
Curriculum tools
Webinar Recordings
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During this virtual event our guest speakers Kyoko Hashimoto and Guy Keulemans discuss how place-based making and bioregional design has shaped their studio practice.
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For current and future EDUCATORS in the field of Jewelry and Metalsmithing. We will provide information and examples of ways educators (globally) are changing their programs, studios, and curricula to address issues of social and environmental impact.
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Students and new professionals will be informed and inspired to make work that aims to limit its social and environmental toll, with the help of Christina T Miller.
Thank you to our So Fresh + So Clean Sponsors!
