MELINDA SALAZAR, PH. D.

I make sculptural, organic and enchanting adornments for the body and soul using textured metals, freeform cabochons cut from natural stones or river rocks. Each stone tells a story; I seek turquoise or lapis that are cut and polished by Southwestern desert nomads and handpicked basalt or granite smoothed over time from along the Northeast and Northwest coastline.

My jewelry evokes the mood of land around us and is designed as one-of-a-kind piece, no two are exactly alike. I specialize in transforming your old, beloved stones into modern, updated and treasured wearable art.

I am a retired professor from Gender & Women’s Studies and K-12 teacher education with a specialty in the spaces where peacebuilding, sustainability and indigeneity intersect. I serve as the Co-director of The Truth Telling Project (www.thetruthtellingproject.org)

As both la conquistadora and la indigina reside within me, I am sandwiched between cultures, unsettled and conflicted. I believe those who decorate women and men’s bodies with ornamentation from resources taken from land and practices from human cultures, have a responsibility to mediate the spaces where stolen lands, bodies and other colonial practices intersect with art to create public and private conversations about the liberation struggles of land-based cultures for self determination, truth telling reparations for harm done, and structural violence and other forms of social injustices so we, collective humanity, can repair, restore, and mature into our highest potential. I am honored to adorn your bodies with my jewelry designs and to share beauty in a fragmented world.

GALLERIES

Ogunquit Art Museum Store, Ogunquit ME

Exeter Fine Crafts, Exeter, NH

Mariposa Gallery, Albuquerque, NM

The Black Heritage Trail Center, Portsmouth, NH