Lydia Martin is a contemporary jeweller living, working, and teaching in Little Rock, AR. Her work, built upon the foundations of technical skill, is an exploration of material skill, surface, line, and movement. Through the use of traditional metal-smithing techniques, she creates pieces that become an investigation of intentions and consequences. Lydia received an MFA from State University of New York at New Paltz in 2017 and a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Lydia has taught at a variety of institutions including Baltimore Jewellery Center, Towson University, and Penland School of Crafts. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally and is represented by Jewelers’Werk Galerie in Washington, DC. Currently, she teaches at UA Little Rock, heading the jewelley and metal-smithing program.

"My jewellery is a record of intentions and consequences, a history of decisions made during the physical act of making. Each piece becomes a tangible catalogue of actions bearing the marks of their making, seams highlighted or hidden in turn by their colour and finish. Distortion reveals the limits of materiality, while skilful reconstruction seeks to make whole what was once fragmented." - Lydia Elsa Martin