Ivy Jewell

MFA Ceramics, 2025

Exposure to pesticides are biomineralized within the formation of baby teeth in utero. They create epigenetic change transgenerationally, that is register in at least three generations of post-exposure.

I am the sixth generation raised on Iowa’s well water. I mine my body for excess metals and minerals from our exposures to agricultural pollution and pesticides. Big agricultural corporations and petrochemical industries have impacted the health of low-income, rural communities in middle-America for decades. Iowa has the highest cancer rates in the nation and leads the country in new cancer types. Trauma is stored in the land, in the body, over generations. We carry the land with us. The work before you operates within a material feedback loop: each cast glaze piece is layered with the remnants of sculptures that came before them, all containing metals and minerals mined from my body.

Traces can be quantified and tracked back to their origin material, to my body, to Iowa, visualizing residual exposures over generations.

I grow and harves cyanobacteria (blue green algae) which blooms in excess in impaired waterways. These are nitrogen, phosphate. I collect calthemites (urban stalactites) from crimbling man-made concrete road strcutures. They grow quickly, feeding off of CO2 emissions. These are calcium carbonate.

I grind and calcine my baby teeth. These are calcium, sodium, magnesium, lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and nickel.