Heidi Lowe art selected for voting rights online exhibition

Secret Identity Projects, an ongoing curatorial collaboration between American professors of jewelry and metalsmithing Kerianne Quick and Jess Tolbert, presents Amend: an online exhibition taking place in the month leading up to the United States presidential election of 2020.

Local businesswoman Heidi Lowe is a participating artist.

Exploring the past, present and future of one’s civic duty and privilege to vote and all it entails, the online exhibition brings together art jewelers and metalsmiths currently working in the United States and U.S.-Mexico border cities.

Amend commemorates the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote.

This exhibition highlights the continued fight for true universal suffrage by promoting and supporting initiatives that combat voter suppression and advocate for expanding voting rights, while recognizing the suffragists’ work.

Lowe’s "Speak Out" is a cuff bracelet that doubles as a megaphone. It symbolizes the women throughout history who fought for the right to vote as well as those activists on the front lines today. The most prominent silhouettes on the piece are based on historical photographs of suffragettes. This piece is a tool to empower the wearer and to amplify her voice.

To amend a text is to make minor changes in order to make it fairer, more accurate or more up-to-date. To amend is to modify, to make better, to improve. To amend is to put right.

Secret Identity Projects invited 100 female, she/they-identifying jewelers to design a piece of jewelry using the “I Voted” sticker as a jumping-off point; they were charged to interpret it any way they like.

Jewelry artists and metalsmiths from all levels of career and expression, from emerging to master, are included in the exhibition. The work demonstrates a broad range of subject matter and concern, taking on a multitude of forms and making many declarations about voting equity and the complex, messy history it includes.

The exhibition will support Black Voters Matter through a financial contribution generated from artwork sales, and bring attention to important voting issues through informational posts on the exhibit’s Instagram page and website.

Black Voters Matter is a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing power in marginalized, predominantly Black communities. It aims to increase voter registration and turnout, advocate for policies to expand voting rights and access, develop infrastructure where little or none exists, and fund activities related to specific elections. Effective voting allows a community to determine its own destiny.

For more information, go to www.blackvotersmatterfund.org and amendexhibition.com.