Jewelry Idea Sources

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

People often ask me where the ideas for my jewelry come from. Most of the time the topics address a specific incident, something that happened to me or someone else I know. I try to take that incident and distill it down to the essence of the situation so that other people can see themselves in the narrative. An example would be the necklace below, The Revenants. The idea for the necklace came from reading a poem by the American poet, Billy Collins, who often writes about his dog and some old photos I found after my grandmother died.  The photos dated from the early 20th century when my grandmother was a girl and are of people posing with their pets. The poem by Collins is told in the voice of his deceased dog that he had to put down.  On the back of each of the snapshots I included information my grandmother recorded, like names and places and dates. To this, I added a narrative told in the voice of the pet in the picture. The narratives and the Collins poem are intended to be humorous. However, whenever I have had to put one of my pets to sleep, I have felt immense guilt.  We all do; no one likes to watch their pet suffer, but we suffer when we end their misery.  The necklace was made a few months after my old cat, Louis Armstrong made his final trip to the vet's office.  He was my buddy and I miss him.

Many times people have commissioned me to make something that is personal for them or a significant other.  Below is a necklace Robert Kaplan commissioned me to make for his wife, Margaret Levi, when she directed the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies at the University of Washington. To better understand her work, I read about Harry Bridges, the man who organized the longshoremen and helped create the ILWU. I also read a lot about the history of the Port of Seattle and the evolution from loading and unloading the ships by hand with a hook to the modern day crane and container technology.  The end result was a necklace with arms and hands holding hooks that grasped ebony bars, since originally the major export from the Pacific Northwest was timber. The beads at the back are made of silver American quarters pierced with letters that spell ILWU on one side and UNION on the other.  The necklace celebrates the history of the longshoremen and labor, which is a subject Margaret teaches.  I loved working on this commission. It's one of my favorite necklaces.

Another commission came my way when the curator Barbara Johns retired from Tacoma Art Museum. Her staff called me and asked me to make something for her. I was honored to be asked but I needed an idea. I looked through some of the catalogs Barbara had written in her tenure at the Museum and decided to make a necklace about writing that was also a record of her major exhibitions at TAM. The necklace is a collection of handmade beads. I used IBM typewriter balls as a reference to writing and then made smaller beads from silver Precious Metal Clay and stamped into them the exhibition titles.  The clasp was fabricated from ornamental silver wire made by the late jewelry artist Ken Cory and Barbara and I had collaborated on an exhibition and catalog about his work.  I think she liked it because every time I ran into her for several years afterwards she was wearing it.

 Many artists are reluctant to take on custom work or commissions.  I have always enjoyed them because jewelry as an art form has always had an intimate association with the lives of the people who wear it.