Queer Craft as Restoration Panel at NYC Jewelry Week 2026

[queerphoria] volume 6: restoration celebrates 2SLGBTQIA+ identity, healing, and resistance through contemporary jewelry and sculpture.
About this Event

Queer community panel exploring craft as a medium for activism, healing and restoration. Creating an experience of belonging through a dialogue about the beauty, resilience, and collective power of queer and trans voices in jewelry and craft.

Contributor

Queer Metalsmiths is a community space where we honor, center and uplift 2SLGBTQIA+ jewelers, metalsmiths + makers. Our mission is to be a safe space for queer artists to connect and support each other through visibility within the metalsmithing and craft fields. Our community focuses on representing artists by exhibiting their work, providing educational resources, and functioning as a platform for growth and learning.

Juror Omar Monroy is a trans artist of Ñuu’Savi descent whose jewelry practice, El Techichi, grew out of something deeply personal; her childhood, the women who raised her, and her chihuahua, Rue, whose spirit set the whole journey in motion. Born in Iztapalapa, Mexico and raised in Oaxaca, Omar moved to California at age six. She handcrafts each piece in brass, copper, and sterling silver, using only vintage or locally sourced gemstones as a quiet act of resistance against an extractive industry.

Juror Brennan Lee is a foundry worker, jeweler, and sculptor based in Berkeley, CA. As the Wax Department Supervisor at Artworks Foundry, Brennan helps produce some of the nation’s most esteemed contemporary bronze sculptures and monuments. He has had the honor of making molds, pouring waxes, and casting bronze for the studios and estates of Ruth Asawa, Mildred Howard, Woody Othello, Mario Chiodo, Lawrence Noble, Judy McKie, and more.

Moderator Tracey Carswell is a queer and trans non-binary coach, curator, educator, speaker and artist with a huge commitment to promoting equity for creatives and entrepreneurs. They are the founder of Powerful in Pink and co-founder of Queer Metalsmiths. They focus on empowering individuals excluded or marginalized in traditional creative and entrepreneurial fields. Tracey invests in the growth and success of women, femmes, queer, trans and BIPOC leaders in the jewelry and craft industries.

Panelist Kris Harvey, founder of independent jewelry brand Kris Averi, was raised in the Northeast, setting the stage for her everlasting love of the natural world, spirituality, and all forms of design. Kris is passionate about creating exclusive, uniquely elegant, and timeless jewelry while being inclusive to all forms of love. As a queer designer, she is a passionate advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. Kris believes love transcends gender, identity, race, and culture.

NYCJW26: November 16–22, 2026

Each November, NYC Jewelry Week presents The Week, a seven-day celebration of jewelry and the people, ideas, and craftsmanship behind it. NYCJW26 brings together a global audience for a dynamic mix of in-person and virtual experiences across New York City and beyond.

Explore the full , featuring exhibitions, shopping experiences, retail collaborations, talks, panels, workshops, demonstrations, tours, and more. Virtual programs will be streamed on YouTube, while in-person events offer opportunities to engage directly with artists, designers, curators, collectors, and other members of the jewelry community.

With many programs free and open to the public, NYC Jewelry Week invites everyone—from longtime jewelry enthusiasts to those just beginning to explore the field—to discover the artistry, ideas, histories, and craftsmanship that make jewelry so compelling.

Join us for NYCJW26, November 16–22, 2026.