Jeanne Marie Martineau (she/they) is an artist, jeweler, dreamworker and facilitator who is fascinated by the ways we imagine and create reality using sound and image. She has always been excited by beautiful human made objects, studying Aesthetic and Cultural Theory in her undergrad at UC Berkeley and went on to spend her entire post-college career in jewelry.
Most notably, Jeanne Marie worked at Cartier where she was on both the retail sales and corporate client experience sides exploring the emotional and sensory importance of jewelry. She was on the New York Cartier Fifth Avenue Mansion’s reopening team, welcoming clients into the largest Cartier boutique in the world.
At the Mansion Jeanne Marie was equally interested in the emotional lives of employees, leading a cross-team communication committee and participating in an employee-led meditation club and helping facilitate employee meditations through pandemic lockdown.
In February of 2021, after over 7.5 years with Cartier, Jeanne Marie quit her job to make art full time. She envisioned herself leaving New York to sing and dance on the beaches of South East Asia, but, fate took her in a different direction landing her in Baltimore instead where she started to create Jewelry from recycled plastic trash.
As a multi-passionate artist Jeanne Marie always has her hands in multiple types of expression at once. For her there is no separation between life and art, life is art. She finds great joy in transcending disciplines to explore new possibilities. One of these expressions is helping people tap into their desires and own unique creativity through songwriting workshops, dreamwork sessions, and one one
I have been compelled by recycling plastic since high school and am eternally inspired by Precious Plastic an organization dedicated to making plastic waste recycling accessible.
My Process
Collecting and documenting: I have collected hundreds of pieces of plastic from my own waste, off the streets or on beaches, in multiple countries, and from friends and family. With the help of several paid Maryland Institute College of Art grads I am first photographing and documenting every piece of plastic that comes my way and getting to know it. What type of plastic is it? Where did it come from? What was its use in its previous life? Each bit of data is saved into a registry we’ve created. This phase of the project places material in context and maps its current relationship to the people it has traveled between.
Reverence: Once the plastic’s relationships are identified there is a liminal space between what the plastic was, what it is now, and what it will become. In this space how might I honor the natural beings this plastic was made from as well as the life it led as disposable packaging? How have I imposed meanings onto this plastic? How does regarding it as “bad” or “trash” color my relationship to the genius material through which so much of my life today is made possible? I believe that deep change is made possible when current reality is fully accepted. How might regarding this material with reverence expand my ability to accept and love reality and from there transform it? How can the way I relate to these objects and this material parallel the direction I’d like all my relationships to move in?
Design: With a new relationship being practiced, I am working closely with the plastic in an intuitive way as a medium for it to realize its own dreams. I believe that everything has its own dreams and desires. In many of the world’s oldest cultures all beings, animate and inanimate, dream. In the ‘Dream Tending’ dream work approach dream images are regarded as alive, they have their own desires and make requests of us. I am here to listen and help this plastic realize its wildest (and most luxurious) dreams. So of course a material discarded and treated as cheap trash would dream of reincarnating as beautiful precious objects!
Production: Similar to the earth forming diamonds, I too use heat and pressure to remold these pieces of plastic “trash” into beautiful newness. I manipulate the melt plastic dough and paint with the colors. Metal is an important as companion material that is playing a literal supportive role to the plastic works. Polyethylene really wants to have a duet with yellow gold. I make custom molds for this project and am employing the power of hydraulic presses! Metal settings are both lost wax cast and fabricated.
the project
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Most notably, Jeanne Marie worked at Cartier where she was on both the retail sales and corporate client experience sides exploring the emotional and sensory importance of jewelry. She was on the New York Cartier Fifth Avenue Mansion’s reopening team, welcoming clients into the largest Cartier boutique in the world.
At the Mansion Jeanne Marie was equally interested in the emotional lives of employees, leading a cross-team communication committee and participating in an employee-led meditation club and helping facilitate employee meditations through pandemic lockdown.
In February of 2021, after over 7.5 years with Cartier, Jeanne Marie quit her job to make art full time. She envisioned herself leaving New York to sing and dance on the beaches of South East Asia, but, fate took her in a different direction landing her in Baltimore instead where she started to create Jewelry from recycled plastic trash.
As a multi-passionate artist Jeanne Marie always has her hands in multiple types of expression at once. For her there is no separation between life and art, life is art. She finds great joy in transcending disciplines to explore new possibilities. One of these expressions is helping people tap into their desires and own unique creativity through songwriting workshops, dreamwork sessions, and one one