Amulet

Amulet was a multi-phased project exploring ideas of journey and collective healing. This three-phased community metalsmithing project explored the intersection of materiality and community, beginning in community organizations, stopping along the ocean in LoPresti Park, East Boston, and culminating in a large protective bird-inspired sculpture Vedro is welding for Boston’s City Hall Plaza.

Vedro explored the lineage of humankind’s relationship with metal, its alchemies, and material properties. The physicality of moving vision into form, through metalsmithing, can be a small embodied experience of affecting change on a material level –  a metaphor for our agency to transform our realities. 

Vedro launched a series of workshops in the spring of 2022 with community partner Veronica Robles Cultural Center and other East Boston stakeholders.

Photo supplied by the artist.

Timeline:

  • Community hammering/intention-setting workshops began in Spring 2022.

  • LoPresti Park workbench opened on Wednesday, July 13th, 2022 and remained up through August 2022.

  • Large-scale public sculpture commissioned for Boston City Hall Plaza North Entrance to be installed in Spring 2023.

Phase 1 Wishmark Workshops (February - July 2022)

How does an object retain the intentions and energies of the maker?

Join metalsmith Rhea Vedro, and add your hammer marks and wishes to steel panels that will be welded into a collectively created steel sculpture. The finished sculpture will be offered as an amulet for our collective safe passage and will be installed in City Hall Plaza this fall. Bonus: Make your own protective metal charm to take home!

Clear your mind and focus on the idea of safe passage.  What or who comes to mind? Hold this intention for the safe passage of a loved one, or an aspect of your own internal journey.

Consider:

  • A physical journey

  • An emotional transition or challenge

  • A spiritual transformation

Take your hammer and your metal texturing tool, and begin to mark the metal in front of you, stamping in your intention for “safe passage” and notice what comes up for you.

Phase 2 Workbench at LoPresti Park, East Boston (July - August 2022)

After months of community workshops collecting wishmarks, Vedro installed an interactive hammering workbench along the waterfront at LoPresti Park in East Boston. All were invited to stand at an imagined portal where land meets sea and hammer their wishes into a metal panel on top of the bench. This year, the metal panels will support the creation of a large protective bird-inspired sculpture for Boston’s City Hall Plaza. Stay tuned!

Photos of Rhea Vedro’s Amulet and the opening event taken by Matt Teuten (c)

Phase 3 Amulet at Boston City Hall Plaza North Entrance (Spring 2023)

The community amulet will come together in Boston’s renovated City Hall Plaza as commissioned bird-inspired steel sculptures over 16’ high, incorporating the wishmarks Vedro gathered over the previous months. Amulet is intended to serve as a guardian sentinel for the moving energy of the city, offering safe passage through a shared landscape. Bird imagery is a long-running exploration in her practice, Vedro sees “birds as symbolic of ascension, migration, liberation, and journeys between realms.”

Rhea originally trained as a jeweler and metalsmith, and this sculpture will be her largest “magical artifact” to date. 

Check out Rhea’s website and Instagram.

PRESS

  • Bay State Banner “East Boston public art fuses metalwork and community” July 27, 2022

  • Dig Boston “Dig This: 3 Simultaneous Temporary Exhibits Open in Eastie this Week” July 11, 2022