New York Art Life Magazine to Publish Feature Interview with Brooklyn Jeweler Ali Vedad Yuner This Week

The Turkish-born artist discusses fish, faith, ecology, and the living "beings" he carves for the body in a wide-ranging conversation going live this week.

CHELSEA, MANHATTAN, NY, UNITED STATES, June 19, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- New York Art Life Magazine announced today that it will publish an in depth feature interview with jeweler and metalsmith Ali Vedad Yuner this week. The conversation runs more than 3,500 words across sixteen questions and traces the artist's journey from the Turkish coast to his current studio in Brooklyn. Readers will find it on the magazine's website within the next several days.
The interview offers an unusually personal look at one of contemporary jewelry's emerging voices. In it, Yuner speaks candidly about the childhood memories that shaped his obsession with metal, the philosophy behind his graduate thesis, and the methods he uses to fuse digital sculpting with traditional handwork. Throughout the piece, he returns to a single guiding theme: the idea that jewelry can reconnect people with the living world.
A Conversation Years in the Making
Ali Vedad Yuner has spent the last several years building a body of work that sits at the crossroads of craft, ecology, and faith. Born in Turkey and raised near the water, he was captivated as a child by the silvery facades of fish along the coast. That early fascination grew into a lifelong interest in metal and, eventually, into a full practice in jewelry and metalsmithing.
He first trained as an industrial designer at Pratt Institute, graduating with highest honors in 2022. After a brief period working in commercial jewelry, he enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he earned an MFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing in 2025. During his time at RISD, he also designed and taught a course of his own, "ZBrush for Jewelry," and served as a teaching assistant alongside several faculty members.
The new interview captures Yuner at a pivotal moment. He recently launched his own label, Ali Vedad Yuner Jewelry, which centers on wood and natural materials. At the same time, he works as a hardware CAD specialist for The Sample Room at Tory Burch. The conversation explores how these worlds inform one another and how a designer trained on production floors came to make objects he describes as talismans.
Inside the Interview
The feature is structured around sixteen questions, grouped into themes that move from origin story to philosophy to process. Early questions revisit the coast where Yuner grew up and the moment his interest in metal took hold. Middle sections turn to his ideas about faith, smallness, and ecology, drawing directly from the artist statement that anchors his practice.
In one passage, Yuner reflects on why he treats adornment as an act of faith. "Unlike histories that are bent to authorities, jewelry stays safe in museums, guilds, and the minds of makers," he explains. "That security lets it exist as an object of belief, a quiet line of communication between the wearer and something larger." For Yuner, this belief is not tied to any single religion. Instead, it expresses a trust in a wider existence and an acknowledgment of how small humans are within it.
That sense of smallness, he insists, is a comfort rather than a burden. "I enjoy the feeling of littleness," he says in the interview. "It reminds me that I am not above the earth, but within it." Raised in a dense urban environment, Yuner describes his pieces as bridges back to a natural world he felt estranged from as a child. He hopes that wearing one can help others feel less alone on the planet.
Later questions dig into the practical side of his studio. Yuner discusses how he moves fluidly between digital programs like ZBrush and Rhino and the patient handwork of carving, casting, and finishing. He also explains why he has expanded into wood, a material that, in his words, already carried a life inside it before he ever touched it. The interview closes with a look at the year ahead and his long-term ambition to blur the line between jewelry and small living monuments.
A Busy Year Ahead
The timing of the interview coincides with one of the most active periods of Yuner's career. In 2026 alone, his work appears at AUTOR in Bucharest, Romania, and at SNAG's "Mineral Minded" exhibition in Tucson, Arizona. He has also received an Open Studio Residency Award from the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Maine, along with a residency award from RISD's Jewelry and Metalsmithing department.
His recent recognition extends well beyond exhibitions. Yuner has been profiled by the respected jewelry platform Klimt02, featured in a Munich Jewelry Week paper campaign, and covered by the Providence Journal in its report on the 2025 RISD graduate show. His thesis, titled "Ecospiritual Entanglement," was also published as a book. The New York Art Life Magazine interview gathers these threads into a single, reflective portrait of the artist.
"We were drawn to Ali's work because it asks big questions in a quiet voice," said an editor at New York Art Life Magazine. "His jewelry is beautiful, but it is also genuinely thoughtful about our relationship to the natural world. We think readers will come away seeing adornment differently."
The editor added that the interview reflects the magazine's wider mission. "We try to give artists the space to explain their thinking in full," the editor said. "Ali used that space generously, and the result is one of the most reflective conversations we have published this year."
Where and When to Read
The full interview will be published on the New York Art Life Magazine website this week. Readers can find it alongside the magazine's ongoing coverage of contemporary artists, designers, and makers working in and around New York City.
Those who wish to learn more about the artist can explore his portfolio at alivedadyuner.com or browse available pieces at alivedadyunerjewelry.com. Yuner also shares new work and studio updates on Instagram at @alivedadyuner.jewelry.
About Ali Vedad Yuner
Ali Vedad Yuner is a Turkish born jeweler and artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He holds a BID in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute and an MFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from the Rhode Island School of Design. Maintaining a long interest in aquatic life, he carves trees, bones, and biology into adornments of apotropaic power. His practice researches the interaction between jewelry and the ecosphere, where the act of wearing can signify an appreciation of non human ecology and invite engagement between the wearer and the wider ecological web. He combines this research with a heritage of geographical craft, creating endemic "beings" that come alive once worn. His work has appeared in exhibitions in New York, Providence, Tucson, Bucharest, and Istanbul.
About New York Art Life Magazine
New York Art Life Magazine covers the artists, designers, and cultural makers shaping creative life in and around New York City. Through interviews, features, and exhibition coverage, the publication highlights both established names and emerging talent across disciplines.

Max A.Sciarra
New York Art Life Magazine
info@nyartlife.com

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