LOQUAT – Fashion Studio + Vendor Demonstrations (jewelry + wood-burning)

Join us in the MECA&D alum owned and operated fashion studio at Loquat. Tour the equipment, materials, and engage with makers as they produce their work. Artists and alumni Bryan Hansen (Metalsmithing & Jewelry 18’) and Jason Haskell (Woodworking 20’) will also be in store all day working in their portable studios. Hansen and Haskell will be demonstrating jewelry making and wood burning respectively. Their works and the works of many other artists will be on display and available for purchase with cash and credit card.

Saturday October 5th, 11:00am – 6:00pm

LOQUAT: We know that art can save lives. Our materials, motifs, collaborations and contributions are selected to directly benefit and empower marginalized people, causes and aesthetics. Our goal as artists and designers is to honor the individuals, traditions and communities that have made LOQUAT possible.

Jason Carias graduated from Maine College of Art and Design in 2021 where he received his BFA in wood working and furniture design. Carias is a POC Maine based woodworker and turning artist based in Portland Maine. Carias’s focus is to create work that is ethically designed. He does this by working with locally sourced lumber to create bold pieces that showcase design and woodgrain. Carias’s designs are handmade and inspired by sculptures within furniture, nature, and art by using the process of stack lamination. Carias’s hope, through his art, is to inspire other POC youth to join the field of woodworking.

Bryan Hansen grew up in the midwest and graduated with a BFA in metalsmithing and jewelry from Maine College of Art in 2018. In reference to his childhood mindset, he fabricates, casts, and forges objects of vague whimsy that appear artifactual in nature. Hansen’s interests lie in tools, relics of supposed unimaginable significance, the augmentation of the body through said objects, and a precursory state of perception that makes up any and all of the connections we experience in our individual constructions of reality. Stripped of these heady concepts he also appreciates and pursues the beauty in simple objects and curated forms and the almost supernatural allure certain forms are capable of producing.