We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joe Velick a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joe, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

When entering art school, incoming students likely have some idea of an intended focus for pursuit, but most aren’t dead-set on their fixed media so early in their education. One of my professors and I recently discussed what an ideal “first-year experience” might look like, where all students would be required to spend at least one class period (about three hours) in each department of the school getting a feel for the tools used, processes practiced, and ideas created and shared. As people are often overwhelmed when making these consequential life choices, this would hopefully allow them to make a more informed decision about their desired career path. Ideally, colleges would provide more comprehensive career counseling as well. In the art and design world, a good measure of a person’s likelihood of success is the ability to market oneself. My experience in school has largely been based on creative skill-building with little focus on building the self-marketing and networking skills needed for a prosperous art career. Colleges offering classes in networking that teach artists how to sell themselves and their image to potential employers, investors, or gallery owners, and how to decide if they are a good fit for that artist would likely see a higher turnout of notable, influential, and prepared artists and designers.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

It would be easy for me to leave this at “I’ve always known I wanted a career in art,” but the truth is, I originally wanted to go into medicine. My entire school career and even into higher education, I prepared for a life in the medical field. I took different classes at my community college such as forensic anthropology, medical terminology, and medical assistant training in the two years before I attended Kendall College of Art and Design (KCAD) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But at the end of the day, I wasn’t quite as enthralled with my classes as I was with my paintbrush and palette.
My interest in art began when I was young. I had numerous influences from in and out of school, including family and teachers who inspired me to take risks with different materials and processes. At the time, these experiments were a detriment to my mother’s art supplies like her sheet copper and wire, but they ultimately propelled me to take greater leaps in my creative journey. At the same time, I stayed up at night reading D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths and watching episodes of Bones, which further fueled my interest in human anatomy and mythology. On my own, I learned about the bones in and the systems of the body, as well as the backstories of the Olympians and their cohorts. Shortly after high school, the pandemic hit and I was stuck inside longing for something to do. So, I sewed pieces of scrap leather together to make a painting-like composition that I then used as the front panel of a purse.
At the time, my friend was a student at KCAD, and their motivating words convinced me to apply. It had been a long time since I had made any kind of sculpture in the traditional sense, and when I saw the option of “Metals and Jewelry Design,” the allure of not just creating, but creating wearable pieces that I could carry with me wherever I go was too enticing to pass up.
Since then, my style has evolved across most of the media I work with to reflect my love of anatomy and corporeal forms. As my interests in ancient religion, medicine, and human anatomy compound, so do my creative assets. At KCAD I have been able to expand my skillset dramatically. I’ve picked up not just metals and jewelry skills and processes like casting and fabricating, but also printmaking, painting, graphic design, and woodworking among others. I begin my thesis officially in January 2025, and I will show this synthesis through that project.
In my career, I aim to strengthen the bridges between different media and disciplines because what drives me is knowledge. Sharing and building skills *with* others rather than simply from them is critical. For example, a bronze sculptor making a piece based on the Battle of Thermopylae can learn from the discoveries of an archaeologist who has excavated that site, improving the sculptor’s use of symbolism within the context of their work. Similarly, the archaeologist may learn new information about previously unknown tools and processes, which may inform their discoveries going forward.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

One thing that non-creatives can have difficulty understanding is the amount of learning and background that goes into being a successful artist. Going beyond spending years learning and honing a craft is understanding disciplines outside of art and design. Knowledge of sciences, math, history, and global politics can be of equal importance to life experiences in forming a narrative around one’s art. Take for example the music of Kate Bush. Her song Wuthering Heights, inspired by the Emily Brontë novel of the same name, and her song Cloudbusting, which details the arrest of psychiatrist and pseudoscientist William Reich through the eyes of his son Peter, are informed by her intake of literature and history. Like a research chemist, anthropologist, or journalist; artists must synthesize the information they are taking in to present it more tangibly, whether for themselves or others.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

In one of my first jewelry classes, our professor told us that the crux of product design is the ability to look at an object and see how it was made. Since this moment four years ago (and after a very helpful “materials and processes” class), I can see the world in a new light. Viewing not just a “functional” object like a sink or a car part, but a piece of art in a museum, and knowing the order in which the brushstrokes were laid or where the sprue lines were attached to the statue during casting allows me to see the real-world applications of these processes and apply them to my own creative methodology.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @jvjeweler
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/joe-velick-b31174300

Image Credits

Andrew Schmidt, Van Johnson, Mitch Van Dyke