Cindy Fong
She/Her
San Francisco, CA
Cindy is an emerging metal artist based in San Francisco working in fabrication, lost wax and sand casting. She reimagines everyday objects in metal, exploring nostalgia and pop culture through craft.
Cindy is an emerging artist based in San Francisco with a deep passion for storytelling through craft. She started her metal arts journey in 2023 and it changed her life. Her work explores nostalgia, pop culture, and person identity, often through unexpected materials and familiar forms. From goldfish crackers to Oreos and Cheez-its. She loves reimagining everyday objects in metal. Her work is a little absurd, a little precious, and a reflection of her evolving craftsmanship and desire small moments of joy.
How does your creative practice reflect your experience of living and making as a BIPOC and/or 2SLGBTQIA+ maker?
“As a first-generation Chinese American with immigrant parents, snacks and processed foods were rare and cherished in my household. An Oreo, a bag of goldfish crackers, a pretzel, these weren't ordinary. They were small celebrations, moments of joy that I held onto. That experience of treasuring what others take for granted is the emotional foundation of my practice.
Casting these objects in metal is my way of saying those childhood moments mattered and deserve permanence. I am not being ironic, I am being sincere.
My path to metalsmithing was also shaped by my upbringing. As the child of immigrants, stability came first. Art wasn't discouraged, but it wasn't the plan. I took one ceramics class in high school and didn't return to making for years. I discovered metalsmithing as an adult, through community classes, after establishing myself professionally. That delayed creative life art practice beginning not in youth but in the margins of responsible adulthood is a distinctly immigrant-adjacent experience.”
Ancient Bronze, 45.77mm x 45.77mm 12mm width, 2024What techniques, stories, or materials have been passed down to you, and how are you reimagining them in the present?
o artistic techniques were passed down to me, that absence is part of my story. What my immigrant parents gave me instead were values: resourcefulness, patience, precision, and the belief that anything worth doing deserves your full attention and care.
I have reimagined those inherited values through metalsmithing. Every aspect of working with metal rewards exactness, the patience required to carve wax by hand for 40+ hours, the precision needed to achieve a clean sand cast impression, the care required in finishing and polishing a piece until it reflects light the way you envisioned.
Recently I began learning stone setting, which is perhaps the most direct expression of my inherited values in my practice. Stone setting demands absolute precision, a bezel that is even a fraction of a millimeter off will not hold a stone securely or beautifully. There is no room for approximation. It requires the same disciplined, careful attention my parents applied to building a life from nothing in a new country.
In this way I am not just making jewelry, I'm practicing the values they passed down, expressed through a medium they never had the opportunity to explore themselves.
How does your work honor those who came before you while forging new pathways for the future?
Anything else you would like to share about this work? This can be an important part of the process, sourcing materials, research, etc.
This work is dedicated to every immigrant who sacrificed self-expression to build a better life for their children and family. My parents, like so many others, arrived in a new country with nothing and poured everything into survival, stability, and providing opportunities they never had themselves. There was no time or space for art or expression. Creative identity was a luxury that had to be set aside.
That sacrifice is not lost on me. The creative freedom I have today, the ability to spend hours carving wax, to invest in casting and materials, to pursue metalsmithing as a serious practice, exists because of what they gave up. I did not inherit artistic techniques but I inherited the possibility of having them.
When I cast a snack in metal, I am also casting a piece of the childhood they worked so hard to give me. When I set a stone with steady hands, I am honoring the precision and discipline they modeled every day just to keep our family moving forward.
I make art for both of us for the version of myself they made possible, and for the creative lives they never got to live. Every piece is a small act of gratitude and a continuation of their story.
Part of my research process involves searching grocery stores and corner stores for the snacks that shaped my childhood. As an adult, those objects feel distant now, they live in a different era of my life, behind the practicality and responsibilities that adulthood brings. But when I find them on a shelf, something immediate and visceral happens. The memory of what it felt like to hold one as a child comes back completely.
That search is not just research, it is an act of reconnection. I am looking for pieces of my own history in the snack aisle.
From there, the process of translating a snack into metal is deeply intentional. I study the object closely, its texture, its embossed details, its weight in my hand. I source wax and casting materials carefully, choosing metals that honor the subject. The Oreo cookies I carved by hand took over 40 hours and required dental tools to capture every detail of the design.
I want the finished piece to feel like the memory itself is familiar, precious, and more permanent than the original ever was.
Photographs Courtesy of the Artist