5 Profiles

Journalist Jennifer Altmann spent time at the Baltimore Jewelry Center as a writer-in-residence in the Fall of 2024, interviewing five artists to learn about their creative practices and perspectives. Through conversations with community members J Taran Diamond, Molly Shulman, Cindy Cheng, Stevie Pniewski, and Elaine Zukowski, she captured the ways in which each maker pushes the boundaries of material, meaning, and identity in their work.

From exploring authenticity and imitation to drawing inspiration from popular culture, memory, and sustainability, these artists represent the diversity of approaches within contemporary jewelry. Altmann’s profiles offer an intimate look at the BJC community and the innovative ways its members are shaping the field.

J Taran Diamond: Teaching Fellow and Studio Manager

J Taran Diamond is fascinated by the juxtaposition of what’s real and what’s fake. She has coated pearls with plastic in her work to “turn the pearls inside out, making them pearls on the inside and plastic on the outside — real pearls into fake pearls.”

The rings and necklaces she makes with these “inverted” pearls — which are powder-coated in blue, green and other colors — are an exploration of her identity as a queer person. “The term ‘invert’ has been used to describe gay and transgender people,” she points out. “I am interested in mapping my identity and experiences as a queer person onto material objects. I manipulate the surface of jewelry objects and conflate the qualities of preciousness and commonness to investigate and challenge the meaning of authenticity, legitimacy, and belonging.”


Diamond has always been interested in what people wear and why. She was initially a costume design major in college until a metalsmithing course drew her to jewelry. After earning a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of North Texas, she attended a master’s program in fine arts at the University of Georgia. For her final project, she created jewelry, tools and functional objects that responded to sites in the South where Black people were enslaved.

Diamond was selected for an artist residency at BJC in 2022 and was awarded a three-year teaching fellowship in 2023. As a fellow, she serves as an instructor and receives mentoring from experienced educators. She also serves as a studio manager.

Diamond’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, including at NYC Jewelry Week, the Czong institute of Contemporary Art in Gimpo, South Korea, and the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.

For the project “Tenderhearted,” Diamond uses found synthetic hair to reflect on the role of braided hair “as a means of self-transformation that exists uniquely within Blackness,” she says. “I was captivated by synthetic hair that slipped off someone’s head and was on the street.”

After cleaning, dyeing and styling the hair, she entwined it with powder-coated metals and pearls to create what she calls “messy” rings and brooches. ”I think a lot about what happens to things we are done using, and what no longer being of use means for those objects and for the people they were connected to.”

She also used purchased hair to create a bracelet of hot-pink braids that dangle several feet from the wrist, reuniting the hair with the body. “This hair that once belonged to the body can belong to the body again.”

Molly Shulman: Youth Program Leader and Instructor

Molly Shulman’s latest line of jewelry is inspired by reality TV. She makes enamel and powder-coated brooches with arresting quotes from her favorite show, “Vanderpump Rules.” “I’ve always been interested in what drives people,” she says. “I found myself fascinated with why this show has become so popular.”

Her brooches — carrying “wild quotes that no one would ever say unless they are unburdened by social norms” — are delightful artifacts of modern culture, elevating our voyeuristic interest in the lives of others.

“I’m not sure what I did to you, but I’ll take a pinot grigio,” reads one necklace, while another says,  “Don’t waste your time with a 41-year-old narcissist.”

The pieces mimic Victorian-era cameo brooches that memorialized royalty, providing a commentary on the prominence of reality TV characters in today’s society.

Shulman has worked at the BJC since 2017, when she was a bench assistant for jeweler Erica Bello. The following year, she became BJC’s youth program leader. She earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from James Madison University.

BJC offers a number of programs for kids and teens, including three-day summer camps that offer an introduction to the history of jewelry and basic metalsmithing skills. There is also a workforce development program, which provides academic year and summertime offerings, during which teens produce a jewelry line while learning about marketing and branding. The BJC also sends instructors to public schools to teach workshops, and hosts after-school programs in its studios.

Shulman finds her work with children rewarding. “There’s such a beautiful way that they approach a challenge that has helped me immensely as a maker. If you know nothing about the process. it’s really easy to dream big.”

As an BJC employee, Shulman gets bench space and a discount on classes, which has enabled her to study cloisonné, enamel work and other subjects.

Being a part of BJC has greatly enriched her jewelry practice. “I moved to Baltimore to work at the BJC, and it has changed my life,”she says. “We help each other so much, and you don’t even have to ask for help, because people offer. We have such a strong community. ”

Elaine Zukowski: Student and Instructor

Elaine Zukowski makes jewelry using a variety of materials, from broken glass to fishing line. The classes she has taken at BJC for the last decade have fueled her exploration by teaching her new techniques, and the BJC artist talks have provided inspiration.

”This place is about the cross-pollination of ideas,” she says. “I go to every artist talk. People come here from all over the world, and I gain so much from hearing their talks. It’s endlessly enriching.”

Zukowski works as an art conservator, with a specialty in restoring gilded objects such as frames. She has restored frames at the Barnes Foundation and in a reception room for the Senate at the U.S. Capitol, among other projects.

That work also fuels her jewelry-making. “Many times, the materials I come across in my work I end up incorporating into my jewelry,” she says. “I’m lucky to have a rich working life where one informs the other.”

While casting frames and creating silicone molds in her restoration work, she came across a resin called WoodEpox, which is employed to mimic wood. She found the material would work well for jewelry, and she made a line of earrings combining found safety glass with the resin. She cast and faceted the resin to mimic the contours of the glass, and connected the sculptural forms to ear posts with tubing and silver cable.

Zukowski, who has taught beading workshops at BJC, loves the ancient art of beading. She has created lightweight necklaces, earrings and other pieces using steel wire and vintage glass beads in rich shades of blue, green, magenta and other colors. “Cultures all over the world have a history of beading. I think of it as a through-line of connectivity, and the goal of my work is to use vintage beads to be a part of that continuum.”

A native of Baltimore, Zukowski earned a bachelor’s degree in fiber art from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her work has been exhibited at MAD about Jewelry, the annual contemporary jewelry sale at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, and at Dransfield Jewelers in Richmond, Virginia, where she recently had her first solo exhibition.

For her newest work, she crochets fishing line with micro hooks into organic shapes, seeking to capture “the light, the glow and the feeling of having seen something that will last only for a short while before it is replaced or forgotten.”

Cindy Cheng: Student

Taking classes at BJC completely upended Cindy Cheng’s artistic practice.

Cheng was a sculptor and installation artist, as well as a full-time professor in the drawing and general fine arts departments at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), when she signed up for a class in jewelry and metals at BJC in 2021.

“The class totally hooked me,” Cheng says. She signed up for another class, then another, and eventually took a sabbatical from MICA. “I spent a lot of time at BJC, scratching all the itches I had with my installation and sculptural work. I learned this technical precision and a new understanding of material and process. I enjoy the scale of jewelry and its relationship to the body.”

After a year of classes at BJC in wax working and casting, cloisonné enamel and other areas, Cheng quit her teaching position to pursue jewelry full time. “Jewelry is a more intimate relationship between you and the audience,” she says. “I like the idea that people can buy something and bring it home and imprint on it. It becomes this shared thing.”

Her jewelry was included in an exhibition for the first time in 2024. A sterling silver necklace cast in a single linked chain and a ring were displayed in “Serious Fun” at Gravers Lane Gallery in Philadelphia.

Cheng has an undergraduate degree from Mount Holyoke College and a master’s of fine arts from the Mount Royal School of Art, a multidisciplinary program at MICA. 

She has thrived as a member of the BJC, relishing the dynamics of its shared studio space. “You can always bounce ideas around and get feedback, because there are always people around. If you hit a technical hurdle, there is always someone to help. People are really generous with their time and ideas.”

Cheng recently started her own design studio, where she crafts her jewelry, leaving behind her previous art practice. "This has become my creative practice,” she says. “This is my sculpture now.”

Stevie Pniewski: Instructor and BJC Artist Resident

For their birthday a couple of years ago, Stevie Pniewski received as a gift a two-day stone setting class at BJC. Taking that class led them to decide to pursue jewelry-making full-time.

“I knew this place existed, but I was afraid to pursue it,” says Pniewski, who received a bachelor’s degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), where they focused on fiber art.

After college, Pniewski landed a job at a furniture manufacturer, where they ran the upholstery and metals department. They constructed the underlying structures for stools and chairs and learned to weld. Pniewski also began experimenting with jewelry-making, setting stones in pewter they cast.

After their first class at BJC in July 2023, they kept returning to take more classes, studying wax-working and other subjects. Eventually they landed an internship at BJC.

“I can make things here that I’m really passionate about,” they say. “And I found a community that cares about the same things I care about.”

Pniewski quit their job at the furniture company and juggles several part-time jobs — they work at a cafe and do leather repair — so they can devote the rest of their time to making jewelry and accessories, as well as teaching.

They make leather goods such as bags and wallets, some incorporating chain mail. “The pieces meld together my two loves: leather and jewelry. I love the tiny parts, and I love the struggle. It’s really about the adventure and the experience of making for me.”

They also makes brooches, pendants and rings, usually silver pieces with lighthearted themes, such as a smiling clown pendant adorned with semi-precious stones and smiley-face brooches.

In the summer of 2024, they spent three weeks at Penland School of Craft, where they worked in the dining hall — “I washed 900 dishes a day!” — to earn a spot in a blacksmithing class.

They were selected for a three-month artist residency at BJC at the end of 2024, which provided Pniewski with bench space, mentorship from BJC faculty and free classes. They are teaching a BJC jewelry workshop called “A Ring in a Day” as well as a class for those aged 60 and up that is held at a local community center.

“I am so grateful for BJC. It has changed my life in a huge way,” they say. “I found a community that embraced me.”