Will It Jewelry?
“Hell yes it will,” says Georgina Trevino
I first met Georgina Treviño at her show, Artefactos Alterados, at Industry One in Portland a few months ago. Being the warm, kind and energetic person she is, she jumped in and gave me an impromptu tour of her vases, chairs and handbags, bedazzled with earrings, cuban link bracelets, and other shiny found objects.
And funny enough, a month after our first meeting, she was giving me another tour, but this time over Zoom. We spoke about her time as a horse girl, her *secret* stint spent singing in a cumbia band, and her Cunty Purse release that she worked on alongside her community in San Diego.
During two mini tours, I learned: for Georgina, anything and everything is jewelry — if you look at it the right way; a mindset that she’s carried across furniture, fashion, and art. While jewelry may have a history as a “craft”, Georgina has shown that, as a practice, it is as much design as chairs are — and that a necklace and a chair can even be the same thing in her hands.
Is the chair from your Industry One show the first piece of furniture you’ve made?
No. Actually two or three years ago, I was invited to a design fair in Mexico called Salon Cosa and I made a pink bench based on a nameplate necklace for it. That show was the first time I ever made something on a bigger scale, while still incorporating the jewelry language that I’ve developed. The year after that I got invited to a show in Spain where I made more benches, all in different colors and with different sassy texts on them, like: culona frikitona, siéntate mami, siéntate papi, and sentadita te ves mas bonita.
I love that you describe the benches and the furniture you make as if they’re pieces of jewelry.
I'm a jewelry nerd and so in my head, everything's jewelry, especially coming from Latin culture where jewelry is a big part of it.
When you got started in jewelry did you always have this expanded view of it?
My education was metal-driven and not very experimental. But when I graduated, I got a couple of scholarships to go to some summer workshops alongside artists that were making jewelry using less ordinary materials, like cement and enamel. That opened my mind up.
Not many people know it, but before jewelry, I was a painting major. I’ve also done ceramics and printmaking. So, it's been more about exploring how these different parts of myself come together and just being open and comfortable doing things I haven’t tried before.
Are there objects or materials you want to experiment with that you haven't yet?
I want to make a dining table and definitely do some homewares. I also want to make bigger metal, even public-scale works, that exist for people to interact with. I made a fountain before and I want to do more.
Is there anything from your childhood that inspires your work? For some reason, I wanna ask if you ever had a Bedazzler?
I didn’t have one, but I’d love to make one.
I’m inspired by a lot of Y2K though. Also: Norteño music, tackiness, border pop culture, like the meme of Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) pissing on something, fake Nike – imagery that's ugly but beautiful at the same time.
[Quick intermission as Georgina gives me a virtual studio tour via Zoom]
Are you a horse girl?
Yeah, when I was freaking six or seven years old, I competed doing dances with a horse — Escaramuza Charra. I was so young, but I feel like that sport gave me a sense of empowerment and fearlessness - it was a big ass horse. I did it for 6 years, everyday going to school and then practice after.
You’ve done so many things, from installation to furniture to fashion, and you’ve worked with some big people: Beyonce, Bad Bunny, Kali Uchis, Olivia Rodrigo. What’s next on the bucket list?
I would love to have my own shoe – and I will before I'm 40. I would also love to be a jewelry creative director at a big brand or fashion house.
But I really don't know what else to do. Even if I'm not in the studio, I'm always making in my head. Even in my fucking dreams, I’m making something.
I feel that.
Like I even made a short film recently. It was for my Cunty Purse drop. I made it with friends in San Diego, like Mortis Studio and Brandon Mosquera – from the nails to the hair, everything was San Diego. A few talented friends, Alejandro Garcia, Ricky Regretti and Preston Swirnoff, did the scoring too. They were my studio mates for a bit. I don't do music anymore, but I used to be in a band a long time ago… we'll talk about that later.
No, wait… you were in a band?
Oh, shit. Yeah. I was in a cumbia band when I was 19. I played the tambourine and did a little bit of singing. I was the only girl and there were six guys. It was fun. We played for some cool people that are bigger now.
We just played together again in May at a bar as a comeback too. They've all been bugging me for years, but “Band Georgina” is a secret Georgina. No one knows about her.
–Anyway, that's my career. I don't know.