ABOUT MERCURY

     Mercury Swift is a non-binary artist, jeweler and educator living and working in Baltimore, MD.

They received a BFA in Interdisciplinary Object Design from Towson University, and are currently a Studio & Program Manager as well as Instructor at the Baltimore Jewelry Center. Swift's art practice varies from flameworked glass and cast silver to performance and sound art. Each facet of their studio practice interconnects and inform each other, as all of their work is centered around the body and sensory experiences.

 

     Swift's current body of work explores glass beads as bodies of their own – bodies that experience desire to connect, attach, surround, penetrate, and move together. Swift sees universal life in the forms they sculpt in molten glass; each bead/body behaves differently and responds to its environmental conditions just as people do. The sculpting of a molten glass bead is itself a dance, a conversation about needs and desires between the artist and the glass. Upon completion of each glass bead, the bead itself becomes a relic of the dance. As these forms come together into jewelry, individual glass bodies become wearable communities that function as a living conversation between the glass itself and the body wearing it.  This practice seamlessly blends Swift's glass work and butoh-inspired performance art.