Kiff Slemmons

(American, born 1944)

Kiff Slemmons is an artist and metalsmith. She creates sculptural art jewelry that focuses on ideas, found objects, and non-precious materials. Her jewelry contains layers of meaning, historical and literary references, and sometimes uses visual puns.

Slemmons studied French language and art at the University of Iowa. She later attended the Sorbonne in Paris and studied metalsmithing in Japan. In 2000, she began to collaborate with a handmade paper workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico. Together with these craftspeople, she designs and creates paper jewelry and sculptures made from local plants and natural dyes. Slemmons was a longtime resident of Seattle and has lived in Chicago, Illinois since 2002. The Palo Alto Art Center in California organized a retrospective exhibition "The Thought of Things: Jewelry by Kiff Slemmons" in 2000. Her artworks are in many collections including Tacoma Art Museum; Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Victoria and Albert Museum in England.