Jamie Bennett started his college career studying business at New York University before transferring to the University of Georgia in Athens. He studied business until his senior year when he developed an interest in decorative art and painting, greatly influenced by his professor, the metalsmith Robert Ebendorf. With this change in career paths, Bennett followed Ebendorf to the State University of New York at New Paltz, where, as a graduate student, he studied metalsmithing under his mentor. Seeking a way to combine his passions for painting and metalwork, he began working in enamel, first under Kurt Matzdorf and then under William Claude Harper. In 1974, he earned his Master of Fine Arts degree and began exhibiting his enamelwork. In the forty years since he finished school, Bennett has become known as “one of the most innovative and accomplished enamellers” of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries [1]. He has received many awards including Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His pieces are featured in public collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Victoria & Albert Museum, the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, and the Hermitage Museum. In addition to his jewelry design work, Bennett is Professor Emeritus at State University of New York at New Paltz in the Metal/Jewelry Program.
[1] Neuman, Ursula. “Brilliance: Jamie Bennett.” American Craft Council. Published on Sunday September 8, 2013. https://craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/brilliance-jamie-bennett