Personal Interview Regarding Making Jewelry: The Craft

What do you think about or feel when you’re designing a piece?

It all begins with something simple, a shape, a stone, a line… From there I allow my mind to clear away and my pencil to do the rest. Each piece is channeled in a way, from nothing at all. Sometimes I feel as though my thoughts and feelings are transformed into the piece I’m working on.


What do you love about working with metal?

It’s resilient, forgiving, forever. Its timeless, it will outlive even our own generations. I’m creating my personal legacy, an heirloom that will find its home through so many people beyond my lifetime.


Art or craft?

In a way the craft is the art, and the art is the craft.

You can’t make art without good craft, an artist can’t craft without making art. It’s a symbiotic relationship really. The craft is the process in which the outcome is art.


Who or what do you design for? 

I would never release something into the world that I did not find fit to my own personal standards, I create as if I were creating for myself. Although I rarely make a piece of jewelry to ‘keep’ for myself. My joy is in the creation.


What are your main Inspirations?

I find inspiration in very natural and organic things. I enjoy the odd, the creepy, the eerie, the elegant, and the beautiful.  Moss on the trees, dried up creatures on the beach, skeletons, fossils, rare stones you name it.


What do you hope to achieve with your work?

There is so much to learn in metalworking, I hope to continue to learn new techniques and facets of the craft. I hope to never consider myself a master. To consider oneself a master is to say that you’re finished learning. I see my work as a lifelong process with many small goals but no finish line. I will work with metal until my hands are arthritic and old and no longer allow it.


How will the world benefit from the work that you do?

I’d love to think that on an individual basis, each person who owns a piece of my work will treasure it for their lifetime, and possibly hand it down to younger generations. I create heirlooms, timeless emblems, and a sort of tangible relic like a bookmark in the time when it was created.

I want to give the world a different and more beautiful way to look at things that are normally not looked at at all. My taxidermy eyeball pieces for instance instill a shock in most. They either hate it or love it, but either way, they can’t stop staring at it.


What can a good piece of jewelry do for someone?

It’s an important thing to adorn oneself, it shows self worth and self love, and if everyone in the world honored their vessel, I believe the world would be a more peaceful, and beautiful place.


Do you have any messages to beginners? What did you learn that helped you excel?

Learning jewelry is a never ending process. The more you work with your metals, the more you learn their individual personalities, its characteristics, and its forgiveness. Once you create a relationship with your medium you will be able to manipulate it into becoming exactly what you want.
Experiment! Learn a million different ways to get the same result, you never know when  you are going to need it.