Hui Qi

2022 Senior Exhibition Artists

Hui Qi

Art + Design: Jewelry/Metals

About Hui Qi

Hui Qi is a jewelry designer from Inner Mongolia, China. She loves observing nature and human emotion and mix them with metal smithing and enameling. She is interested in the combination of traditional and contemporary jewelry design. As a BFA student majoring in Jewelry and Metals at UMass Dartmouth, she explores creative design using craftsman techniques, art theory and various modern or recyclable materials, aims to show the world the beauty in her eyes through metalworking, stone setting, enamel and unique design ideas. She hopes that her jewelry could be the medium to express confidence, strength and optimism, to whoever comes by.

Statement

During my years in Dartmouth, I have learned various kind of art with Art major to find my passion. Among them all, jewelry inspires me most. It also brings me more sense of accomplishment. Through jewelry design and metalsmithing, I have found my passion of creating and designing, and I really enjoy spending time exploring different styles to enrich my own design knowledge and solve practical problems in actual jewelry making.

I believe that design ideas and actual jewelry making cannot be separated. Sometimes it is frustrating to encounter problems but solving through thinking and doing always gives me hint to the right direction. I always apply different metalsmithing skills I learned to set challenges for myself and test myself. For instance, how long does it take to figure out the solution, or how productive I can be. Meanwhile, while learning contemporary jewelry design, I am always open for new ways of designing and thinking. For instance, traditional jewelry design materials should not be limited to valuable metals and precious stones. The design can also be presented through different materials, e.g., polymer clay, acrylic, wood, stone, recyclable materials, ceramics, etc.

In actual jewelry-making, I often use simple paper models to make some prototypes, to quickly get an idea of what my final project would be. This method always gives me new surprises. On the one hand, I can quickly anticipate potential problems and improve the design in time. On the other hand, collage making turns the paper design modeling process into an interesting game to arbitrarily place my artwork on the wearable parts of the body, which helps with my imagination and brings me unexpectable inspirations.

I like this research method and I firmly believe that jewelry designer is the career path I will seek. I hope I can contribute to new design concepts in the future.