Jim Charles

Biography

Jim Charles is a Pennsylvania-born artist based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His diverse body of work spans jewelry design, sculpture, and explorations of materiality and memory. Charles earned his undergraduate degree in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from the State University of New York at New Paltz, and a graduate degree in Education Cardinal Stritch University. While maintaining his studio practice, Charles taught Special Education in Milwaukee Public Schools for many years, and subsequently worked as a gallery director at the Sharon Lynn Wilson Center for the Arts and the Crossman Gallery at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. Currently, he teaches at the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he leads the BA Capstone course and teaches in the Jewelry & Metalsmithing program. He also serves as the Program Coordinator for a cooperative initiative between UW-Milwaukee and Hubei University of Technology in Wuhan, China as well as teaching there as a Visiting Assistant Professor.