ACCELERATOR
Rhea Vedro
Amulet, 2022-2025
Amulet is a multi-phased project exploring ideas of journey, collective healing, and protection. This three-phased community metalsmithing project traces the intersection of materiality and community—beginning in local organizations, stopping along the ocean in LoPresti Park, East Boston, and now culminating in a large protective bird-inspired sculpture at Boston’s City Hall Plaza.
Artist Rhea Vedro explores the lineage of humankind’s relationship with metal, its alchemies, and material properties. The physicality of moving vision into form through metalsmithing offers an embodied experience of change—a metaphor for our agency to transform our realities.
Over two years, Vedro invited residents to hammer “wishmarks” into steel panels, which she has welded into the final sculpture. Rising over nineteen feet, the bird-inspired forms stand as guardians protecting the city’s energy.
“To the people of Boston and beyond, may you walk protected along your path—thank you for trusting me with your wishes; may they all come true.” —Rhea Vedro
Vedro launched the project in partnership with the Veronica Robles Cultural Center and other East Boston stakeholders, with support from the City of Boston, the Boston Art Commission, and the Accelerator program.
LOCATION
Amulet at Boston City Hall Plaza North Entrance.
ACCELERATOR
Rhea Vedro
Rhea Vedro is a metalsmith creating at the intersection of materiality and collective healing. Her research explores metalsmithing as a cultural signifier of values, power and protection across belief-systems and time. Trained first as a jeweler, her studio practice is primarily hollow-form steel sculpture. In 2022 Vedro began teaching at MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering as a Metals Artist in Residence & Lecturer.
Vedro received a 2021-22 Boston Public Art Accelerator Program Fellowship and served as Director of Community Engagement for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum from 2016-2021. Her project portfolio includes the City of Boston Mayor's Office of Arts + Culture, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Artisans Asylum, North Bennet Street School, Baltimore Jewelry Center, Vizcaya Museum, Queens Museum, The New York City Parks Foundation, and museums, schools, shelters and creative community spaces throughout the Americas. Vedro holds an MFA in Metalsmithing from SUNY New Paltz.