Exposition
From May 3 to 31, 2025, Galerie Noel Guyomarc’h presents Sedimented Histories, an exhibition gathering collaborative art jewelry by Maria Phillips and Seth Papac.
Text written by Charlotte Meyer
Over the course of more than twenty years, Maria Phillips and Seth Papac have moved through many iterations of relationship—teacher and student, artist and assistant, colleagues, and close friends. Through shifting personal lives, evolving creative practices, and diverging professional paths, their bond has remained steady: a relationship grounded in mutual respect, shared sensibility, and sustained presence.
This enduring connection forms the foundation of their collaboration. Rooted in accumulated trust and curiosity, Sedimented Histories draws from the layered strata of their shared experience—personal, material, technical, and emotional. The initial spark for the exhibition was a visit to a mineral specimen collection, where they were captivated by the visual complexity and compositional richness of objects born through processes of natural accumulation: the patient work of time, pressure, and change.
From there, their research expanded to include salt fields and the quietly persistent presence of minerals in daily life—materials we consume, rely on, and often overlook. As the work developed, sedimentation emerged not just as a formal reference but as a conceptual framework—mirroring how their histories, perceptions, and patterns accrue meaning. French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s notion of mental sedimentation became especially resonant: the idea that past experiences and cultural learnings settle within us, forming unconscious structures that shape how we see and engage with the world.
Their process mirrored this phenomenon. Over months of material exchanges and ongoing dialogue, they allowed layers of thought, memory, and form to build slowly—gathered, shaped, and compressed through time.
Maria refers to the resulting works as landfill minerals—fictional formations assembled from discarded materials salvaged from her personal waste stream. Household debris, beach detritus, and street-found fragments are reimagined into stratified, tactile compositions that evoke geological structure while remaining deeply intimate.
Seth approaches the work as a form of creative excavation—mining not only material but also memory, technique, and relational history. Each object is a constructed relic, a fragment formed by the sediment of shared practice, intuition, and care.
Geologically, minerals and sediments emerge through cycles of weathering and deposition—acts of transformation that echo their own process. The collaboration itself became a kind of slow layering: one gesture settling atop another, one idea shaping the next, until something new emerged. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy reminds us that such accumulation is not static—it is porous and dynamic, constantly shaped by experience.
In this spirit, Sedimented Histories invites viewers to consider what lies beneath the visible surface—not only in the material world, but in our relationships, rituals, and ways of making meaning. Through the careful reassembly of fragments, the work traces how memory and matter become inseparable, forming new strata of presence and possibility.
Charlotte Meyer is an arts professional passionate about amplifying creative voices through strategic storytelling, inclusive programming, and mission-driven leadership in the cultural sector.
Artists biographies
Maria Phillips
Maria Phillips is a Seattle-based artist, educator, and Co-Manager of the Recology King County Artist in Residence Program. Her work reimagines discarded materials, exploring consumption, accumulation, and renewal cycles while challenging conventional notions of value and permanence.
Phillips earned her BA in Communication Design from Loyola University in New Orleans and her MFA in Visual Art from the University of Washington in Seattle. In addition to her studio practice, she lectures, teaches, and serves as a guest critic at institutions nationwide. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, Seattle University, the Rotasa Foundation, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.
Her work has been featured in The Art of Enameling, 1000 Rings, 500 Brooches, and The Penland Book of Jewelry, where she contributed a chapter on electroforming. In 2017, she was awarded the John and Joyce Price Award of Excellence for her work in the Bellevue Art Museum Biennial, which hosted her solo exhibition Hidden in Plain Sight. Her recent body of work, At What Point, was exhibited in May 2024 at 4Culture in Seattle, WA.
Since participating in the Recology residency in 2018, Phillips has deepened her commitment to climate-conscious art making, the exclusive use of found materials, and redefining material worth through thoughtful creation. Through her practice, she advocates for deceleration, de-growth, and a regenerative approach to materiality, fostering dialogue on sustainability and artistic responsibility.
Seth Papac
Seth Papac’s trifurcated practice involves teaching and mentoring students; researching and creating conceptual one-of-a-kind jewelry; and producing fine, commissioned, and production jewelry. They currently serve as an Associate Professor and the Graduate Program Director of Jewelry + Metalsmithing at the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as lecturing, teaching, and acting as a visiting critic at institutions nationally and internationally. Their commitment to the various fields of jewelry extends beyond the studio and the classroom in their capacity as Co-President of the Society of North American Goldsmiths.
Seth received a BFA from the University of Washington and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Their work is published and exhibited internationally, most recently in Schmuck 2025. In the summer of 2024, they were the Artist-in-Residence in the Department of Gemstone and Jewellery at the Trier University of Applied Sciences and the Jacob Bengel Foundation in Idar Oberstein, Germany. They have received several awards and grants including the Louise Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship. Their work is part of numerous permanent collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Cranbrook Art Museum, and The Rotasa Foundation.
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