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The Dartmouth
March 28, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Shultz '09 explores College class divide with jewelry

Shultz bases her artistic work on observations of Dartmouth culture, creating jewelry that mocks and puns.
Shultz bases her artistic work on observations of Dartmouth culture, creating jewelry that mocks and puns.

Since her freshman year, studio art major and honors candidate Dulce Shultz '09 noticed that many Dartmouth students strive to seem well connected by "name-dropping."

She often saw students from lower- and middle-class families concealing their backgrounds in order to fit in with their wealthy peers at Dartmouth. Although at first glance Dartmouth's campus seems homogenous, Shultz saw major divisions within the College's student body based on class.

Shultz, an illustrator on The Dartmouth staff, comments on the material evidence of the class divide at Dartmouth in small-scale, metal sculptures -- her senior honors project in studio art -- questioning the association of jewelry with status and wealth.

Honors studio art majors like Shultz take a two-term seminar while focusing on one of six concentration areas.

Shultz will work on her senior honors project over the course of Fall, Winter and Spring terms with professor Brenda Garand, the chair of the studio art department, and studio art instructor Jeff Georgantes as her advisers.

Shultz makes jewelry pieces that address class dynamics at Dartmouth in part because of the socioeconomic connotations of gems and precious metals. Her three years of experience working at the Hopkins Center for the Art's Claflin Jewelry Studio also influenced her choice of medium.

"I think that a lot of what goes on with class has to do with resources like precious metals," Georgantes said. Georgantes oversees the jewelry studio and has worked with Shultz as an instructor, an employer and, most recently, as an adviser.

"With the turn in the economy, I think this is a really timely theme," he said. "The importance of class issues has become much greater and more pronounced."

"Dartmouth is a unique school in the sense that a lot of students come from wealthy backgrounds, but there is a very generous financial-aid policy here so there are students from less privileged backgrounds and they all go to the same school," he said.

Shultz is currently working on a polished, silver chain that resembles a choker with intricately wrought links.

Georgantes was very impressed by this piece and the contrasting ideas it provokes. He described the chain as something a guard dog would wear, but the piece remains beautiful and precious, with silver so finely polished that it glitters.

"This is a mockery of those big, chunky Tiffany's-brand necklaces that were popular a few years back and looked like dog collars to me," Shultz said.

Shultz credits her mother, who was an art major in college, for exposing her to art at a young age. Though Shultz's mother raised her in Kansas, she made an effort to take Shultz to museums and galleries in their local area.

As a high school student, Shultz channeled her creativity by drawing and painting, but she says this background only made the transition to sculpture at Dartmouth more difficult. Once she gradually overcame her fear of working with three-dimensional media, Shultz began to feel more comfortable as an artist than she did when completing works on paper and canvas.

"I found that I loved working with my hands in my sophomore year at Dartmouth and working in three dimensions," Shultz said.

As she continues to work on her final pieces at Dartmouth, Shultz plans to create a silver brooch that will look like a name tag as a response to the "name-dropping" and social networking that goes on among students, she said.

Instead of reading "Hello, my name is..." the brooch will instead read, "Hello, my last name is..." Shultz hopes the work will become a performance piece, though she has yet to nail down the details.

As another project for later in the year, Shultz is currently sketching an imaginative sculpture that will mock the fabled "M.R.S. degree," which students are said to pursue if they come to college to find a wealthy spouse.

Shultz envisions a set of nine different rings with one for every finger except for the fourth, ring finger. In the sketches, each ring bears a different design. Arrows on the rings for the left pinky and left middle finger point out the absence of a ring on the fourth.

When the works are complete, Shultz hopes to display the collection in the exhibition cases that line the basement of the Hop. Next year she plans to graduate to the New York City art scene, working either for a gallery or an art publication.

"When I hired Dulce as a freshman I saw something in her, and I just knew she would go great places," Georgantes said.

"She is a very talented person -- driven and hard-working. She is making important work for right now and comes at the idea of class from a variety of angles," he said.

Shultz's project coincides with the Hop's three-year Class Divide programming initiative, which hosts performances, speaking events and workshops focused on socio-economic disparity in the Upper Valley.

The next event in this series is Anne Galjour's play "You Can't Get There From Here," which will run at 8 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 7th, and 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 8th in the Warner Bentley Theater.