"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow." - Audrey Hepburn  

 

Sharon Church was a force—quiet, steady, and profound. For more than four decades, she carved beauty from resistance. Her jewelry and objects, often made of wood, gold, and silver, carry the language of nature: branches and wings, seeds and flame. But her work wasn’t just about form; it was about emotion, transformation, and the soul of the handmade.⁠

In GARDEN, we present Scepter, carved from boxwood, part adornment, part relic, part offering. Scepter transforms a symbol of authority into something far more intimate: a personal talisman shaped by hand, imbued with reverence, and rooted in the quiet strength of the natural world.⁠

Church often turned to the botanical not as decorative flourish, but as metaphor. Leaves, petals, twigs, and pods were tools for expressing interior states—grief, growth, transformation. She once said, “To make something with your hands, to know that you exist… it has enormous value.” This belief wasn’t abstract for her—it was lived daily, carved line by carved line.⁠
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A Master of American Craft, Sharon Church was a lifelong educator and mentor who taught for over 40 years at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her work is held in the permanent collections of museums around the world. She received two Pew Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from SNAG.⁠
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Church believed in the power of objects to hold meaning and memory. Her jewelry invites us to slow down, to feel the weight of the materials, and to listen to what is being said, not just through ornament, but through care.⁠
Her presence in this exhibition is a reminder that nature is not always soft. It can be wild, enduring, and resilient. And in Sharon’s hands, it becomes a language of power, grief, and grace.⁠