Yan Gao - USA/China
Yan Gao
Designer biography:
Yan Gao is a contemporary jewelry designer whose work bridges Digital Media, Game Design, and Jewelry Design. Before entering jewelry, she studied digital media and game design, where she developed a strong interest in worldbuilding, virtual environments, and dreamlike visual narratives. Her ongoing Dream Garden theme grew from a virtual garden she created in her earlier digital practice, later transforming into sculptural wearable works through glass, metal, 3D printing, and experimental materials.
Yan’s practice explores the delicate space between dreams and reality, translating emotion, memory, and natural forms into body-oriented jewelry and wearable sculpture. Inspired by personal dream experiences and botanical elements such as iris and orchids, she creates works that express intimacy, anxiety, protection, healing, and emotional connection.
Combining digital fabrication with traditional craftsmanship, Yan creates jewelry that moves between ornament, art object, and wearable sculpture. Her practice also extends into stage, editorial, and fashion contexts, where jewelry becomes a medium for storytelling, visual expression, and immersive imagination.
Collection concept:
Dream Garden explores the boundary between dreams and reality, where emotions take shape through organic and botanical forms. The collection grew from a virtual dream garden Yan first imagined through her digital media and game design background, and later evolved into a physical jewelry series that translates digital imagination into wearable form.
Each piece functions as a wearable fragment of this imagined inner landscape, transforming emotional states such as intimacy, anxiety, protection, comfort, and healing into sculptural jewelry. Floral elements, particularly iris and orchids, serve as symbolic forms of resilience, self-protection, and transformation, inviting the wearer to experience a sense of calm and connection.
The collection combines glass, metal, 3D printing, 3D pen drawing, and experimental materials. Glass brings transparency, light, and fragility, while metal provides structure and support. Digital fabrication allows organic forms to grow, extend, and open around the body, echoing flowers, vines, and dreamlike natural structures.
Through the tension between fragility and permanence, softness and structure, the handmade and the digital, Dream Garden transforms inner experiences into tangible wearable forms. Ultimately, each piece becomes a personal and protective space close to the body, where storytelling, materiality, and emotion intersect.
