Resident Exhibition | T I M E : Preservation, Continuation, Evolution
T I M E: Preservation, Continuation, Evolution is the introductory exhibition of the 2025/2026 Printermedia Metal Arts Residency cohort — seven Vancouver artists whose practices are bound together by two shared pillars: time and connection.
Presented by Malaspina Printmakers Society with the support of the Vancouver Metal Arts Association, the Metals stream of the Printermedia Artist Residency provides metal and jewellery artists with a rare shared studio at Howe Street Studios in downtown Vancouver, where they build community, develop their practices, and explore the meeting point of metal and print media. This exhibition is this cohort's first invitation to the public to see the outcomes of their independent research and explorations.
About the Exhibition
This exhibition explores time in the context of jewellery. In participating in community, the resident artists are part of an act of cultural creation; they simultaneously preserve the craft of metalwork and jewellery through making, and continue its traditions and techniques while contributing to the local field. Within the idea of time, the connection they create through their processes highlights the unique style of each artist.
Jewellery holds the big and small stories of history. Adornment has always been integral to human culture, and in a fast-paced world it is a reminder to slow down, be present, and appreciate handcrafted objects that carry stories and create connection in everyday life.
Meet the Artists
Cristiano Bruno (Matilpi)
For over two decades, I have dedicated myself to the precision of hand-carving and engraving. I believe that jewelry should be more than an ornament; it must hold a unique narrative and a profound soul.
Trained in the generational legacy of West Coast metalwork by my uncle, Charles Harper, my hands carry the ancestral traditions of the Kwakiutl First Nation and the bloodlines of the Matilpi, Wadhams, Harper, and Seaweed families. Yet, the execution of my work is equally shaped by the structure and resilience I gained during 13 years of service with the British Columbia Regiment and the Canadian Armed Forces. This exhibition represents a synthesis of those two worlds—where the endurance of metal meets the fluidity of storytelling, creating a contemporary legacy that stands the test of time.
Wendy Davey
Wendy Davey is a metalsmith, educator, and artist whose practice spans jewellery, wearable adornment, and metal sculpture. Inspired by the natural beauty of the world around her, she creates work that celebrates connection, curiosity, and transformation. Driven by a lifelong love of learning, Wendy continually explores new materials and techniques, challenging herself to push the boundaries of her craft. For this exhibition, Wendy expanded her practice by learning traditional acid etching incorporating asphaltum — an ancient resist material used for millennia, dating back to ancient Egypt. Whether creating an intimate piece of jewellery or a large-scale sculpture, Wendy's work reflects a deep appreciation for craftsmanship, storytelling, and the enduring beauty found in nature.
Each spring, cherry blossoms return with quiet certainty, transforming bare branches into clouds of delicate pink and white before gently drifting away. Their beauty is fleeting, yet their return is one of nature's most enduring promises. This collection explores the meeting of what is fleeting and what is timeless. The blossoms remind us that after every winter comes renewal, hope, and new beginnings. Though they cannot be held, the memories and emotions they inspire can endure. Through jewellery, these brief moments in nature are transformed into lasting keepsakes. Each piece celebrates hope, resilience, and the timeless beauty found in life's ever-changing seasons.
Drew Jang
Drew Jang is a contemporary craft artist working across jewellery and objects. Based in metalsmithing and lapidary practices, they explore light, transparency, opacity, and transformation. Through hand-cut gemstones and industrial materials, their work investigates how physical materials can express intangible experiences and offer new ways of seeing.
This work explores how wounds accumulate over time and what it means to live with our broken parts. Scars leave irreversible changes, from intimate loss to the ruins of war, reminding us that the past cannot be undone. Rather than symbols of an ending, however, scars hold the potential for growth. Just as muscles grow stronger through repeated tearing and repair, the wounds left by despair and failure do not diminish us but shape us into more resilient beings. Healing is not the erasure of the past, but the ongoing expansion of the self.
Alessandra Mei
Alessandra's artistic interests are deeply rooted in the organic forms and vibrant hues found in aquatic organisms. The shapes, textures, and colour palettes derived from the natural world serve as a wellspring of inspiration for her jewellery creations.
Alessandra's practice explores an interest in the relationship between nature, tools, and technology. Alessandra considers whether the tools and systems we create are separate from the living world, or whether they are themselves an extension of evolution — another branch on the tree of life. This inquiry shapes her approach to making, where natural forms and constructed elements coexist in tension and harmony. Through this lens, her pieces become reflections on transformation, continuity, and the passage of time.
Her work invites contemplation of deep time, space, and the enduring presence of the natural world. By combining the visual language of uncommon mineral occurrences with the precision of crafted forms, she creates pieces that suggest both fragility and permanence, reminding us that we are always in relation to the larger rhythms of evolution and the universe.
Jessica Milum
Jessica Milum is a metal artist and educator working between adornment and sculpture. Her practice explores material process and the relationship between the body and the objects it carries.
This body of work explores time as lineage. Inspired by ancestry, family ties, and inherited objects, the project reflects on how jewellery moves through generations, gathering meaning as it travels between hands and lives.
The pieces within this collection reflect a spectrum of time and origin. Some are formed from reclaimed gold and inherited stones—materials that have lived previous lives, carrying subtle histories within them. Others mark the beginning of future narratives. Together, they sit in quiet conversation: past and present, memory and possibility, preservation and becoming.
Mayari Rodriguez
Mayari Rodriguez is an artist and jewellery designer from Vancouver. Her creative inspiration is rooted in the dualities of the artificial and natural patterns that occur in everyday life, drawing from a range of influences including, futurism, primitivism, collective consciousness, and technology. She works primarily with precious and semi precious gemstones and metals. She is drawn to jewellery as identity rebuilding and as a practice of grounding ourselves to the present.
In this project, she explores the nonlinear path of time - how patterns and imprints endure time. Drawing out the residual messages that are communicated to us through objects partnered with the phenomenon of movement, light, and shadow. With the help of these elements, what is remembered is an essential, rhythmic understanding that is embedded in our experience of time.
Sharon Wong
At the intersection between jewellery, art, and design, Sharon Wong is an artist and jeweler with a background in fashion design. Her work centres around the human relationship with adornment and the connection to the objects we surround our bodies with. Her exploration of the intimate relationship that forms between the wearer and the piece is expressed through creating personal, wearable sculpture.
In this body of work, the idea of perspective is explored in physical form. Capturing movement in the contours of asymptotic lines, the curved motifs of this sculptural practice are of the body and from the body. Simultaneously asymmetrical and symmetrical, the multifaceted nature of the human experience shows that we can represent multiple singularities at a time. As time passes we have the ability to mold, adapt, transform and change as well as remain the same. With each iteration changing and evolving, the elements of form are explored through variations in repetition of structures. The passing of time creates distance and space from a memory or a moment: it’s a perspective that only time can create.
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