 Elizabeth R. Agte (pronounced ahg-tee) has been making jewelry in the Rochester New York area since 1985. In addition to her ever-expanding line of jewelry, she also works in mixed-media, teaches local workshops in Precious Metal Clay and enameling, and gives private metalworking classes in her studio.
Incorporating a wide range of materials, such as sterling, copper, PMC, polymer, hand-cut gemstones, and beach glass, her work has been described as architectural, Southwestern, and pagan. Her early work was primarily geometric, with Art Deco references, and though her work still retains classical lines, the icons and symbols present in recent work reflect Elizabeth's interest in the cultural and spiritual use of jewelry historically. She produces limited editions of work that bows to symbolism. A dedication to recycling has found its logical conclusion in jewelry designed around computer panels, antique dominoes, airplane parts, buttons, old coins, beer caps and human hair.
This last year has been an eventful one for Elizabeth. Three of her pieces of Precious Metal Clay jewelry were included in the book PMC Decade by Tim McCreight. These pieces were featured in an exhibit by the same name at the National Ornamental Metals Museum in Memphis during the annual SNAG conference this last summer. The pieces have gone on to an exhibit at the Brookfield Craft Center in Connecticut. One of the pieces, “Throw of the Dice Necklace” was the subject of an article in the spring PMC Studio Magazine. Elizabeth attended the Society of North American Goldsmith Conference thanks in part to a grant from the Arts and Cultural Council of Greater Rochester.
In July 2006 she presented a marketing paper at the biannual Precious Metal Clay Conference at Purdue University, where her work in PMC was exhibited in the “Revolution / Evolution” show. Her mixed-media “Clothespin Gloves” were exhibited at the “Made in NY2006” show at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, NY. During 2005, she was an artist-in-residence at the RIT School for American Craftsmen, working under Len Urso. In 2004 mixed-media pieces were exhibited in “Text and Texture” at the Center for the High Falls Gallery in Rochester. A mixed-media copper artist book “A Comfortable Life” and a grouping of copper houses called “A Village” were exhibited at a Schweinfurth show called “Domestic Bliss”. Elizabeth had a solo exhibit at the Genesee Pottery Gallery in 2003, titled “The Key is Under the Mat, and Other Theories of Einstein’s Friendly Universe”. A grant in the summer of 2002 funded her attendance at the first PMC conference in Wooster, Ohio. In 2000, she received a grant for her work in PMC, and was published in the Fall 2000 PMC Guild Newsletter.
She has been working extensively for the past nine years with "Precious Metal Clay". She has taught workshops in PMC all over the western New York area including the Rochester Museum and Science Center, the Genesee Pottery, the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, BOCES, and at various high schools. Students asking for private instruction have come from as far away as Pennsylvania, Buffalo, Corning, Florida, Vieques, Puerto Rico, and Ottawa, Canada.
A Colorado native, Elizabeth's use of tarnished copper, patinated silver, and semi-precious stones such as black onyx, lapis and carnelian, agate and jasper reflect her roots in the American West. Originally a ceramicist, her transition from clay to metal was an inevitable evolution. A successful line of ceramic pins led her back to her college alma mater, the State University of New York at Brockport, where under the instruction of Albert Paley and Thomas Markusen she learned the techniques necessary to adapt her ideas to metal.
A collaborative mixed-media project in 1996, that received a grant for its installation, gave birth to a whole new body of on-going work. The exhibit entitled "Pin Money: A Notion of Allowances," explored the use of money as a sexually symbolic gesture. Since then Elizabeth has created two first place award-winning sculptures "Playing by the Rules... You can't get there from here," and "Shrine to the $1000 Tooth." Her mixed-media piece entitled "Elizabeth-the-Artist Paper Dolls" was exhibited in the "Sixteen Twenty" show at the Center for the High Falls Gallery. Another mixed-media piece “You Are Here” was exhibited at an Alumni Exhibit at SUNY Brockport.
Elizabeth was involved in the worldwide “100 Heroines” Project in 1997-98. She designed and created over 1,000 lapel pins for the project, one of which was presented to Hillary Clinton in Belfast, Ireland.
Elizabeth lives in Fairport, a charming village on the Erie Canal, just east of Rochester. She is enjoying her new location, the friendly people, the Victorian houses, and hiking trails, and the fact that the coffee shop,library, farmers market and dollar store are just down the street.
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