Megan McGaffigan received her MFA in Jewelry/Metal Arts at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and her BFA in Metalsmithing from Montana State University. Her one of a kind work has been exhibited nationally at galleries such as Velvet Da Vinci (San Francisco, CA), Pittsburg Society for Contemporary Craft (Pittsburg, PA), and Shibumi Gallery (Berkeley, CA). McGaffigan’s work is included in public collections including the Racine Art Museum (Racine, WI), several private collections, and represented by Facèré Jewelry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA) and Paxton Gate (Portland, OR). She currently lives just outside the Portland, Oregon metro area.
I find great interest in tradition, sentiment, and longing, and it is through the melding of the antiquated method of tintype photography and traditional jewelry making techniques that I create objects of adornment that reflect intimate awareness of these human experiences. This shift in my work has been markered by my heavy-hearted relocation from Montana to the Pacific Northwest and the devastation of my family’s home in the 2017 California wild fires. I am interested in creating intimate objects that attribute sentiment to things, place, or time that no longer exist. I am drawn to the idea of an unexceptional material being laced with something precious. Tintypes being historically common and affordable set into precious materials that become objects of adornment are the result. Materials, like memories and sentiment, are an ordinary part of the human condition yet uniquely of value to the individual wearer.
Self Portrait, 2017. Tintype Photograph.