Interview with Jewelry Designer Tanya Crane

For many, this summer is riddled with uncertainty and suffering. In the midst of it all, students and staff are trying their best to stay connected and stay afloat. The Donald Claflin Jewelry Studio is fostering community and connection by holding online jewelry classes and hosting a biweekly Coffee Hour, where students are invited to join a guest artist for a casual chat about jewelry, life, or whatever their hearts desire. 

Tanya Crane was the Coffee Hour guest on July 20th. She is an esteemed jeweler and metalsmith from southern California currently living in Boston, MA, as a Professor of the Practice of Metals at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Much of her work, in her own words, "dwells within a liminal existence between prejudice and privilege" as she navigates being Black in white spaces. In the Coffee Hour and an additional interview, she generously shared her thoughts and experiences with Dartmouth students.

How did you get your start in jewelry and metal?

"I started taking metalsmithing classes in Seattle at a community art center named Pratt. It's named after Edwin T. Pratt, the Black activist. In the '60s he was assassinated in front of his home like all other Black leaders during that time… The very first class I took was a combination of foldforming and color on metal, which was enamel, and I was hooked from there. I took as many classes as I could. I worked there as a work study student, because of course I couldn't afford classes… I lived there for six or seven years, taking more than 20 classes." 

How do you choose your colors? What does color mean to you when you use it in your work?

"It's funny because it's kind of been an evolution. When I first started enameling, I was exploring all the colors. I gravitated towards green—bitter green in the Thompson enamel colors is my favorite green—and sapphire, and I would just pair a more earthy tone with a green or blue. Then in grad school, when I was making a body of work, I moved to just black and white. There was no color. I didn't even add a pop of red or something. The black and white for sgraffito was dramatic!… I still do black and white work, but I've moved to colors."

On being mixed-race in California and out East

"I grew up in a very white suburb, and my parents were divorced. My father lived a little further northeast in California and my aunt lived in South Central LA, so every holiday my sister and I would be carted around and shown off to all the relatives on my dad's side. It was a completely different world. If you can imagine late '70s-early '80s Black and white culture—totally different than it is now. Now there's more mixing happening. Even the idea of having a mixed race child—my mom, white, raising two Black children was really not common. I was seen as Black within my white community, but it was never an issue, it was never brought up. I was seen as Black, but I was white-accepted. And California is a totally different culture. Moving to the East Coast, it's more pronounced. I'm more on display. There's more interest in knowing 'what you are', that kind of thing. Wanting to 'get to the bottom of it' for whatever reason, to satisfy whatever curiosity. So that has spawned many bodies of work: this 'other,' but this 'accepted.' There are all these divisions that people have put up. And I'm discovering throughout this whole time my own identity. That's still happening, and it shifts, too. My husband and I have moved 25 times; we've lived in New York City, upstate New York, Madison, Wisconsin, Seattle, California, everywhere but the South. The East Coast is the most weighted as far as race relations. It's the oldest, it has the longest history of anti-Black, slavery, all of that stuff. It's weird. And I don't know that we'll ever get used to it. I don't know that it's ever going to change."

When you make art about your identity and growth, is it ever painful to sell any of it?

"It's never painful, but I think that working really long on a piece and then it going away is like losing a part of you. I wouldn't call it painful; I'd call it 'I hope it has a good life'. That's why I'm on the fence about collecting—not to wear, but collecting to put into a museum or something. I was asked several years ago by a museum to donate a piece, but I didn't donate a piece of jewelry. I donated a piece that was meant to sit somewhere… It's weird to work so long on something and have it just sit somewhere. I want people to wear it. That's why I make so many earrings!"

On who buys her work

"The art jewelry world is very small, and we pretty much support each other; we're the ones buying each other's work. It's the beauty, but it's also going to be the demise of our community—because there's no outside support. People don't understand that jewelry is a part of the art world, it's a part of the craft world, and that needs to be promoted as such so that more people are informed and want to purchase our work. People who are not jewelers! This is really important. We can only sustain it for so long, and there's a very small amount of collectors, and they're old now! They're donating to museums. Now, the work that's in museums is representative of about the 1980s. That's 'contemporary,' but really it's not… That's 40 years ago. We need to educate a new group of young collectors, and young collectors that aren't jewelers."