Date of Award
Spring 5-22-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Jewelry and Metalsmithing
First Advisor
Seth Papac
Second Advisor
Timothy Veske-McMahon
Third Advisor
Molly Volanth Hall
Abstract
A Pot of Gold at the End of the Assembly Line integrates icons of mass-manufacturing with signifiers of joyful work, stimulating a dialogue between industrial and craft labour. Visible traces of the making process left on these works conjure a spectral ‘maker’, implied by the fingerprints, toolmarks, assembly, and conspicuous decision making of an ‘other’. As we relate to these signifiers as opportunities for our own bodily action, this spectre speaks in our own voice. Possessed by this ghost, viewers are vicariously thrust into an imaginary context and made sensitive to the nature of this work — whether it validates individuality or alienates humanity.
I narrow the scope of my subject matter by focussing specifically on mass-produced facture’s dissonant affect, substantiated through a discussion of my work, psychoanalytic theory, and material culture. This theoretical foundation is developed through a case study into the screw, braiding together Gibson’s affordance theory and Marx’s notion of alienation. I situate the research in historical context through an evaluation of jewellery works of the Arts and Crafts and Contemporary Jewellery movements, exploring how manufacturing symbols become entangled with the body’s conception.
Where the text is analytic, speculating a diagnosis of cultural pathology and considering interventions; the physical work is associative, implicating its enmeshed discourse of symbols through the act of making itself. As I rearrange signifiers of both industrial and hand making in my practice, I pursue insight into commodity fetishism and the latent aesthetics of manufacturing — particularly those of the imaginations that they engender.
Recommended Citation
Zalakos, Jonathon A., "A Pot of Gold at the End of the Assembly Line: Jewelry, Facture, and Alienation" (2026). Masters Theses. 1553.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1553
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Aesthetics Commons, Art Practice Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Feminist Philosophy Commons, Fine Arts Commons, Industrial and Product Design Commons, Metal and Jewelry Arts Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons