My name is Atlas Dearborn. I am a metalsmith, an illustrator, and an overall jack-of-all-trades when it comes to art. My current artistic practice concerns identity, growing up, the development and the discoveration of the self. It is something that is personal, something that could very easily be locked behind closed doors, something that is private for only myself to engage with. But everyone experiences similar things. Everyone has to experience the stress of growing up, of being in the middle of the journey in discovering one's identity. That is where communication lies in how individual and private moments compound to encompass everybody, no matter background or experience. It is this communication that allows us to form relationships, something that is primal towards the human experience that I want to stimulate through my work.

Art is an extension of myself. It’s a large component of my identity, something that I can never separate myself from and can never see myself not doing. Any time I think back to when I was a kid, I was making art—after school, summer camps, birthday parties—every waking moment I had involved art. If I wasn’t making art with pastels, paint, or clay, I was thinking of art that I could make once I got home or had access to a studio. It’s the same 15 years later. Art consumes me. It’s a part of me that I can never be separate from. I think it makes it difficult, then, to make art that is expected of me. I have thoughts and ideas, messages that I want to convey, yet I feel trapped at the possibilities in how I can communicate. 

Communication is the result of art, no matter if it is good or bad. Communication means that there is meaning in art. In making art, by thinking in the conceptual, playing with technique, meaning can be discovered after creation, and meaning can be determined by communication surrounding the final product. But communication isn’t always a two-way street; it can be one-way in the form of artist to audience, but also internal, solely artist to the artist self. Art is a tool of self-reflection. Since childhood to now, I have used art as a means to reflect on experiences, on relationships, on the spaces I found myself occupying. Often, it is years later that these conversations develop through my art—an almost-therapy for myself that I allow others to be privy towards as I attempt to rediscover parts of myself through investigations of the self and my childhood. 

My work can best be described in the first piece, the work that is the start of my art’s direction: Nostalgia. In 2022, Nostalgia was created to represent my favorite memory of sitting in the bath of my childhood home. The bath was surrounded by blue tiles with a bathtub to match, filled with ducks and boats and bubbles. Nostalgia is a hollow copper ring featuring a miniature yellow duck and a blue verdigris patina. Not only did this ring mark the beginning of my journey with copper patination, but also was the start of creating art that allowed me to reflect on the little moments of the past in an attempt to communicate with my present, my future, and my growing relationships. It’s bittersweet, in a way, of thinking to the past, feeling happy for the happy moments yet sad in the direct comparison to the now. But this bittersweet moment leads to something far greater, something that makes the present-moment more impactful for myself as an artist, a human, someone with a future. Art is just the physical means of these moments I want to capture; Nostalgia taking the forefront in my work and leading my work in new directions in hopes of new relationships.