Kerianne Quick | OH WELL WHATEVER NEVERMIND
September 26 - November 8, 2026
BROOKLYN METAL WORKS
In The Gallery, 2nd Floor
640 Dean St, Brooklyn, NY
OH WELL, WHATEVER, NEVERMIND confronts the machinery of violence—and the apathy that allows it to become ordinary. Taking its title from a lyric in Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, the exhibition brings together three distinct but interconnected series: OH WELL, body armor-inspired leather and titanium jewelry that transforms ballistic wounds into objects of adornment; WHATEVER, an installation of 300 titanium crosshair pins that implicates the wearer as both target and witness; and NEVERMIND, black-shrouded leather and plexiglass mirrors that turn reflection into an act of mourning, shame, and culpability. Together, the works ask what it means to protect, enhance, and repair the body in a culture that manufactures its destruction—and what it means to look away. Sales from WHATEVER will support The Trace. The press release can be viewed here.
PROGRAMMING
Opening Reception
Saturday, September 26, 2026
7:00 - 9:00 pm EST
Brooklyn Metal Works
In the Gallery, Floor 2*
640 Dean Street, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Artist Talk with Kerianne Quick
Sunday, September 27, 2026
2:00 - 3:30 pm EST
Brooklyn Metal Works
Floor 5*
640 Dean Street, Brooklyn, NY 11238
*Please note that these spaces are only accessible via stairs.
Kerianne Quick (they/she; b. 1977, Glendale, California) is a nationally recognized craftsperson, curator, and Professor of Jewelry and Metalwork at San Diego State University. Their work has been exhibited at Craft in America Gallery in Los Angeles; Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico City; the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; CECUT in Tijuana; and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego. Quick’s work is held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; and Design Museum Den Bosch in the Netherlands. They have received numerous grants and fellowships, including a Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, a Center for Cultural Innovation Investing in Artists Grant, and a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Grant.
Quick co-founded CRAFT DESERT, which began as a journal dedicated to defining contemporary craft in the borderlands and beyond and has since evolved into a curatorial collaboration. Its latest exhibition, Becoming Heirlooms, recently opened at the Judith Harris Art Gallery at the San Diego Central Library. Quick also co-founded Secret Identity Projects, an ongoing jewelry-focused curatorial project, with Professor Jess Tolbert of the University of Texas at El Paso. The collaborators are currently developing a project for the Netherlands-based jewelry event series OBSESSED 2027.
Quick’s research is rooted in craft practice as cultural expression, with particular attention to “material specificity,” a term they defined in their master’s thesis. Drawing upon the embedded histories of materials, their creative practice uses object-making to reveal overlooked narratives and bring hidden stories into view.