Jonathon Zalakos. Rhode Island School of Design New Talents Award Nominee 2026

Name of graduating student: Jonathon Zalakos
Name of guiding teachers: Timothy Veske-McMahon, Seth Papac and Lauren Fensterstock.

Nominated by Rhode Island School of Design.


Jonathon has developed a body of work that brings together a remarkable command of traditional metalsmithing with an inquisitive and often playful approach to material culture. His jewelry considers how objects carry evidence of their making, and how these traces inform our assumptions about labor, authorship, and identity. Moving between the prescribed logic of industrial manufacturing and the spontaneity of gesture, he creates works that are visually exuberant while remaining attentive to the cultural and ideological conditions embedded in the things we make.

What I find particularly compelling about Jonathon's practice is how these questions are worked through in the objects themselves. Rather than simply positioning industrial production and individual expression in opposition, he allows their conventions to overlap, interrupt, and complicate one another. There is both humor and a certain uneasiness in these encounters, inviting us to consider how our understanding of ourselves and others is shaped by the material world around us. Having worked with Jonathon through the development of this body of work and his thesis, I have particularly appreciated the curiosity and rigor with which he pursues these questions, and his willingness to let the process of making complicate his own assumptions.
/ Timothy Veske-McMahon

Aside from myself, Jonathon also worked with RISD J+M Faculty Seth Papac and Lauren Fensterstock on the development of his thesis body of work across his second year of study in the program. A digital version of his thesis artist book, titled A Pot of Gold at the End of the Assembly Line, can be viewed on RISD’s Digital Commons.


Artist statement:

My jewellery is the expression of a decadent repression, characterised by a layer of spontaneous gesturalism trapped within a rigorously logical scaffolding. A bouquet of fist-squeezed plasticine flowers or an incidental smattering of gemstones upon the floor becomes preserved by the meticulous revision of traditional metalworking.

Visible traces of their making process conjure a spectral ‘maker’, implied by the fingerprints, toolmarks, assembly, and conspicuous decision-making of an ‘other’. In different moments, these read as child-like creation, stuck-up goldsmithing, ‘handy-man’ repair, or formal product systems design. Unconsciously possessed by this ghost, viewers are vicariously thrust into an imaginary context and made sensitive to the nature of the work — whether it affirms identity or alienates humanity.

I vividly extricate the worldviews that are baked into these things we make, reifying their ideological affordances into fixed icons and symbols. Taking the form of jewellery, my work is deeply considerate of ‘self construction’ and the ways that our sense of self is shaped by our environment. Hence, there is a critical through-line of biological materialism, gender, and sexuality in the work. I trace the relationships between these constructs and material culture, unsettling the stagnant readings that we have of our objects.


Contact:
Mail: jonathon.zalakos@gmail.com
Instagram: @jzalakos


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