INNOVATIVE JEWELRY DESIGN INSPIRED

As a child, Doug Bucci (MFA '99), assistant professor of instruction and program head of the Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM Program at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, spent a year at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for diabetes treatment. He recalled how he fashioned spare caps of his insulin bottles into beads for necklaces.To get more news about designer jewelry website, you can visit jewelryhunt.net official website.

Now, as the leader of Tyler Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM, Bucci has continued to wield unlikely inspiration from diabetes into his work but in a more high-tech fashion.

Bucci spoke to a crowd of Temple alumni at the university’s Center City campus on January 22, 2020 for "Thinking Organically," a discussion about how he uses data visualization, digital modeling and 3D-printing technologies to make innovative art about disease.

“My system involves looking at the way technology begins to drive change. I’m no longer dealing with ‘this,’” Bucci said, gesturing to his hands. “My work is now driven by the apparatus that I wear.”

That apparatus, which Bucci said includes an insulin pump and a “continuous glucose monitoring system,” exchanges information through radio frequency. Bucci realized he could harness this frequency to collect data, charting the ebbs and flows of his blood sugar, he said.

He can model that data visually with 3D-rendering software to create a collection of unique, precisely shaped digital objects. These objects can then be 3D-printed from a file to create jewelry or other pieces.

Bucci said he was first inspired to bring his personal health into his art during his time as a student at Tyler when a professor encouraged him to look to his closest instincts to guide him as an artist.

“I think that really began to plot my trajectory,” Bucci said. “What I knew best was me, my health, my day-to-day life. What I put into my body, what came out of my body, what I wanted to do and what I was most afraid of.”

Bucci discussed how those aspects came together in one of his pieces titled “Transmet,” a brooch shaped like part of a severed foot. Bucci said the piece was inspired by a conversation he had with a fellow diabetic about their shared fear of needing to get a limb amputated, one possible result of complications related to the disease.

“Jewelry is a wonderful vehicle,” Bucci said. “We wear jewelry out into the world and it’s a messenger, right? We could wear a brooch, we could wear a neckpiece, we could wear earrings and we can engage someone in conversation around that piece.”