For the New York–based artist Caroline Ventura, the creative path is more improvisational than linear. After studying political science with a plan to pursue law, she found her way to metalsmithing. “I took one class at the 92nd Street Y and then apprenticed with someone—he became my guide through the weird world that is the Diamond District,” Ventura says. She went on to launch the jewelry brand BRVTVS, whose gold bands and elemental hoops trafficked in a hard-edged delicacy that attracted the buyers at J. Crew. But after a time, realizing that she’d become “less a maker, more a manager of a team,” she closed up shop and changed course. Lately, her multidisciplinary practice includes works on paper, one-of-a-kind jewelry that employs a setting technique popular in the Victorian era, and photography. Growing up in California with an amateur photographer dad, she got comfortable having her picture taken, which set her up for later modeling work; it also led her behind the camera, open to experimentation. “There’s something really freeing about being able to start over again,” Ventura says. “Not to reinvent yourself, but add a chapter to the story.”
