Jurors - BATTLE of the RINGS 2026
Representing Team Shanks: Susie Ganch
The labor-intensive, site-specific installations of Susie Ganch (born 1970 in Appleton, WI; lives and works in Richmond, VA) incorporate throwaway materials such as recycled jewelry, plastic bags, and disposable coffee cup lids. Her work offers a pointed commentary on the effects of human culture and consumption on the environment.
Ganch’s art exemplifies a belief in a circular economy that operates like a natural ecosystem, promoting the use of existing and finite resources sparingly and expanding recycling exponentially. The idea put forth is that if we use less, use things longer, and recycle as much as possible, we can eventually eliminate trash by not creating it.
Trained as a jeweler and metalsmith, Ganch says of her recent work, “Trading metal for plastic, a ubiquitous symbol that celebrates our worship of the present and disregard for the future, I make anti-memorials born out of eco-anxiety.”
Ganch's undergraduate studies in Geology and her subsequent MFA in Metals from th University of Wisconsin-Madison have shaped her interest in issues of waste and cultural consumption habits. In addition to her studio work, Ganch has been commissioned for largescale installations throughout the country that address these concerns. In that same vein,
Ganch is the co-founder and director of the Radical Jewelry Makeover project, a global jewelry mining and recycling initiative that has traveled worldwide. Ganch has received multiple recognitions, including the 2025 Anonymous Was a Woman Environmental Grant, the 2024 James Renwick Alliance Distinguished Educator Award, the 2024 Society of North American Goldsmiths’ IMPACT Award, and the 2025 Virginia Commonwealth University National/International Recognition Award (NIRA). Other awards include the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, the Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant, the Theresa Pollack Fine Art Award, a VA Commission for the Arts Grant, and several VCU Faculty Research Grants. Her work has been featured in museum exhibitions nationwide and internationally, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum Renwick Gallery in Washington D.C., the North Carolina Museum of Fine Art in Raleigh, the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington D.C., MFA Boston, the Design Museum in London, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, the Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo, Japan, the Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, WI, and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Select private and public collections include the Smithsonian American Art Museum Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., LACMA in Los Angeles, CA, Asheville Art Museum in North Carolina, MFA Boston in Massachusetts, Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and Kohler Company in Kohler, Wisconsin.
Ganch is an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director for the Department of Craft/Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she is also the Metal Area Head. You can find out more at susieganch.com and radicaljewelrymakeover.org.
Representing Team Mandrels: Alex Boyd
Alex Boyd is a sack of chemicals and electrical impulses that somehow managed to attain self-awareness. When not consuming replacement chemicals, staring at its phone or ruminating in existential dread it compulsively creates, trying to satisfy some mysterious aesthetic sensibility that ultimately can’t be satisfied. The results are objects that no one needs, some people want and a few people buy. It lives with its wife, cat and two dogs in Denver, Colorado. Find more at alexboydstudio.com.