RISD Jewelry + Metalsmithing Alum Jameson Enriquez Awarded Windgate-Lamar Fellowship

Recent Jewelry + Metalsmithing grad Jameson Enriquez 26 JM is one of 10 emerging artists across the country to earn a 2026 Windgate-Lamar Fellowship. Offered through the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC, the $15,000 awards amplify the voices of fourth- and fifth-year undergraduate art students whose work “is informed by the processes, materials, traditions, or sensibilities of craft.”

Enriquez says that craft has always been at the center of their practice. Originally from the Midwest, they became obsessed with the Southwestern bolo tie, turquoise beads, and all things blue-green in color after inheriting a treasure trove of costume jewelry from their grandparents.

“For a long time, that classically masculine bolo tie I inherited seemed to highlight my queerness and made me feel like I didn’t meet the expectations of masculinity or Hispanidad culture—like I wasn’t checking the right boxes in terms of my identity,” Enriquez explains. The bolo format, they note, was born through colonial contact and carries influences from European silversmithing and the clasps Indigenous people used to knot bandanas they wore around their necks to protect them from the desert heat. “But the way these things get passed down is almost like a game of Telephone,” they add. “All of those complexities get erased.”

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During their last year at RISD, Enriquez focused on embracing ambiguity and artifice by creating subversive yet beautiful bolos featuring classic sterling silver and turquoise materials, but also recycled plastic, repurposed familial costume jewelry, avocado pits, resin, and rubber tubing. Although they have dabbled in sketching and prototyping, their practice has evolved into one in which these unexpected found materials are collaged together intuitively using a process they refer to as re-memberment.

“I think of re-memberment as the opposite of dismemberment, the process of being broken apart,” Enriquez says. “When you’re in that state, you’re full of potential. You can be remixed in any way. My work—and my identity—focuses on stitching the parts back together, reorganizing them to make something new.”

Although Enriquez describes themself as a solitary worker, they say that their success in the Jewelry + Metalsmithing department came only when they learned to rely on their community. “We spent every day in the studio together,” Enriquez recalls. “Even if we weren’t talking, we were sharing the same silence and being there for each other.”

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They are currently working as an intern in gemstone acquisitions at Tiffany & Co. in New York City, where they are learning to work with suppliers and tracking down the provenance of specific stones: where they were mined, how they were cut, and what path they took to Tiffany. “The internship has really gotten my wheels spinning,” Enriquez says. “It’s making me think about my work in new ways.” 

When the summer internship ends, they plan to focus on the Windgate-Lamar project, first by gathering materials in the form of souvenir blue-green jewelry from tourist shops in the Southwest. They’re also planning to take a course in stone cutting and faceting and then placing the skills learned in conversation with their existing processes.

“I’m interested in layers of authenticity,” Enriquez says. “I’ve always found myself in this in-between space, culturally, this borderless space. I’m trying to use my work to forge a path for myself within that space.”

Simone Solondz / images courtesy of the artist
July 13, 2026