Charity Ridpath

Charity Ridpath is an artist and jeweler based in Austin, Texas who transforms discarded plastics into jewelry and wearable sculpture. She works with everyday materials such as grocery bags, plastic packaging, and other single-use plastics. Using cutting, fusing, and macramé techniques, she reshapes these familiar objects into forms inspired by sedimentary rocks, minerals, fungi, and other natural structures.

Ridpath’s interest in waste and material transformation began early. She grew up above a capped landfill where erosion exposed buried trash and chemical dumping sites, eventually closing the places where she played as a child. That experience continues to shape how she thinks about the long life of the materials we throw away.

In 2017 she began collecting every piece of single-use plastic she used for an entire year. The project Year of Plastic turned that personal archive into jewelry, replacing precious metals and gemstones with plastic forms. Since then she has continued to explore post-consumer plastics in her work.

By placing these materials on the body as jewelry and wearable sculpture, Ridpath invites people to experience single-use plastic in a different way, shifting it from something we quickly discard to something we choose to carry with us.

Available Works

To learn more about Charity Ridpath, please visit Charityridpath.com
email: hello@charityridpath.com or find her on instagram