Podcasts about Metalsmith

I got to spend my lunch break with Samantha Lynch, Jewelry Designer, Metalsmith and Business Owner behind Shiftd Jewelry - Handmade jewelry using high quality metals + genuine gemstones- offering a curated selection of handcrafted pieces for those seeking distinctive accessories.I spoke to Sam about how she started her brand originally as Gypset and rebranded again after a new era of her life began and shifted. Sam and I discussed everything from her evolution of being a metalsmith and the inspiration of her jewelry pieces. We talked about her openness and transparency she shares about her brand and business. As well as, taking the time to go backwards and its ok to do that. Lunch with Biggie is a podcast about small business and creatives sharing their stories and inspiring you to pursue your passion, with some sandwich talk on the side. Created, edited, and produced in Orlando, FL by Biggie- the owner of the sandwich-themed clothing brand- ⁠⁠Deli Fresh Threads⁠⁠. Shiftd Jewelry Social: ⁠Shiftd Jewelry IG:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/shiftdjewelry/Shiftd Jewelry website:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://shiftdjewelry.com/⁠⁠⁠Shiftd Jewelry Facebook:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/shiftdjewelryBiggie's Social: ⁠⁠Deli Fresh Thread's Instagram⁠⁠- ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/delifreshthreads/⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Podcast's Instagram⁠⁠- ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/lunchwithbiggie/⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Podcast's Facebook Group⁠⁠- ⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/lunchwithbiggie⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Podcast's Twitter-⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/LunchwithBiggie⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Deli Fresh Threads⁠⁠- ⁠⁠ https://DeliFreshThreads.com

In this episode of Heart & Hands of a Maker, jewelry expert and business owner Kierston Aiello shares her creative journey and how community, authenticity, and collaboration shaped her success. Kierston opens up about the challenges of entrepreneurship, the importance of finding your niche, and her exciting plans for her new foundry. Tune in for inspiring insights on following your heart and surrounding yourself with supportive, like-minded people. A little about Kierston:  Born and raised in sunny California, Kierston Aiello is a metalsmith and designer with a passion for American craft. While getting her B.A. in Art History at Humboldt State University, she unexpectedly fell in love with Metalsmithing and Jewelry. She has spent the last 12 years working in the Jewelry and Art trades, serving for the last 4 years as the designer and head of Product Development for a well-known manufacturer for the DIY trade. Kierston is now in the process of opening a new business, an artisan pewter foundry and artist collective in Sonoma County. A craft enthusiast to the core, Kierston's hobbies include collecting more hobbies, hoarding shiny things, going to the library, and making an obscene amount of messes.

Join us as we chat with Jessica Coté, a metalsmith from NC, known for her bold jewelry brand, Rosy Revolver. Discover her journey in metal fabrication, teaching experiences, innovative products, and future plans. Learn from her insights on business challenges, social media impact, and creating an inspiring space for artists. Perfect for jewelry artists, creatives, and anyone inspired by entrepreneurial stories.

Chris Anderson took a very different path into working with metal, yet the fit was undeniably perfect. I'm not going to give all the details away, but after retiring from law enforcement, Chris decided to put all of his energy into his business, Lion Punch Forge. I was so thrilled when Chris agreed to take some time out of his very busy schedule to have a conversation with me. He shared is journey from blacksmithing to silver and goldsmithing, and then ultimately to where he has now landed inventing and fabricating innovative tools for metalsmiths. Chris talks about his belief in the need for mental toughness in building a successful business because the entrepreneurial journey has many ups and downs. Later we talk about the creation of the Metalsmith Collective, a cooperative market for tool makers, educators in the jewelry industry, and fabricators of materials such as castings and gemstones. About Chris... Chris is an enthusiastic maker turned inventor who has honed his skills through self-teaching and the invaluable guidance of inspiring mentors he encountered along his journey. Raised in the scenic Pacific Northwest, he developed a profound affinity for the outdoors, which serves as a wellspring of inspiration for his creative endeavors.  In 2016, Chris founded Lion Punch Forge as a hobby, after he, his brother (Bruce), and father (Mike) purchased a coal-fired blacksmith shop. Having retired from a 20+ year career in public safety in 2020, Chris now devotes himself to running Lion Punch Forge full-time as a self-employed entrepreneur. With a background as an instructor in public safety realm Chris has transitioned that role into his new position as a teacher and mentor within the metal arts and creative communities. To learn more about Chris, Lion Punch Forge, and the Metalsmith Collective follow him at the links below. Instagram: @lionpunchforge Website: lionpunchforge.com Metalsmith Collective If this podcast means something to you and you would like to support it, please take a a moment to give it a few kinds word with a written review on your favorite podcast listening platform. This helps me share the podcast with others. You can also share a favorite episode or consider joining our Slowmade Podcast Patreon community. You support literally makes this podcast possible. Thank you so much! You can follow along or reach out to Christine on Instagram: @christinemighion or send her an email at: info@christinemighion.com

Your boy, JBarber, has been teaching at the Penland School of Craft and now we're back with new Studio Noize! We found David Harper Clemons in a weaving cabin making broaches, print, sculptures and drawings. David is also the HBCU tour coordinator for Penland. We talk about the HBCU tours and how to get more diversity into artist communities. David talks about his curiosity with materials in making his functional and wearable art, the value of Black narratives in objects and what you need to be a great metalsmith. Listen, subscribe, and share!Episode 185 topics include:gettting into metalsHBCU tour at Penland School of Craftbringing diversity to Penlandmetalsmithing vs jewelrythe attention to detailtop 3 skills of a metalsmithcuriosity for materialsBlack narratives in objectsimportance of surfaces and touchDavid was born in El Paso, Texas and spent much of his life in Austin, Texas. Initially he began his undergraduate career attending Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, pursuing a degree program for Biology Art. He attended the program for two years before returning to Austin to complete his BFA at the University of Texas in Austin, with a primary emphasis in painting. He earned his MFA in Metalsmithing in 2007 from San Diego State University. David taught in the art department at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, Arkansas for 10 years. During 8 of those years he was responsible for creating and heading the Metalsmithing and Jewelry Department. In 2018 he relocated to Penland, North Carolina to dedicate his time to be an independent artist and workshop instructor. Much of his work embraces the craft of Metalsmithing and it's collected history of techniques and objects. The resulting works rendered in metal, mixed media, and hand made artist books are vehicles to communicate ideas surrounding identity, narrative, and forays into material and process-based work. He has exhibited in numerous exhibitions including: Craft in America: Expanding Traditions, Different Tempers: Jewelry & Blacksmithing, RE/ACTIONS, and has work in the permanent collection of the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, National Ornamental Metal Museum. Yale Contemporary Craft Museum, Ollie Trout Collection at the University of Texas in Austin. See more: David Harper Clemons' website + David Harper Clemons' IG @harperclemons Follow us:StudioNoizePodcast.comIG: @studionoizepodcastJamaal Barber: @JBarberStudioSupport the podcast www.patreon.com/studionoizepodcast

In today's episode, I will be discussing how you can use the Patreon platform as a jeweler with special guest Emily Marquis. Emily has 17 years of experience and is a second generation jeweler. Her business Emily Marquis Designs which she runs with her husband Cal specializes in custom and semi-custom fine jewelry. She also runs Marquis Jewelry Academy located in Stonington Connecticut. She has been using Patreon for her jewelry business since 2019.Check out my favorite portable phone charger Clutch, and save 10% with code METALSMITH: https://www.clutchcharger.com/discount/METALSMITHYou can follow Emily on Instagram at @emilymarquisdesigns and @marquisjewelryacademyYou can visit her Patreon to check it out or join at patreon.com/emarquisdesignsYou can find her jewelry and a link to her academy at emilymarquisdesigns.comBe sure to join my Patreon as a supporter or with a free membership! patreon.com/metalsmithsocietyFollow Metalsmith Society for all the jewelry tips: https://www.instagram.com/metalsmithsocietyMusic attribution: Stock Music provided by RomanSenykMusic, from Pond5

This week on the podcast is part two of our interview with Stephen Yusko. He's a Cleveland-based artist who creates sculptures, furniture, and vessels, using mixed materials combined with forged, machined, and fabricated steel. Stephen also creates public art and jewelry.  He has taught at several schools and universities, including Haystack School of Crafts (ME), Penland School of Crafts (NC), and SUNY Purchase, where he was a Windgate Artist-in-Residence. http://stephenyusko.com/We explore the intricacies of selling art and pricing strategies. Through his firsthand experience, we learn about the delicate balancing act between perceived and actual value, and the methodical approach he employs to successfully navigate the challenging landscape of selling and pricing his artwork. From sculptures and vessels to the seemingly straightforward world of jewelry, Stephen shares his journey in this exciting and intricate market.Stephen discusses the importance of time management, resource allocation, and the powerful role social media can play. And yes, we talk about collaboration too, because no or artist is an island, and every successful entrepreneur knows the power of a good partnership. Prepare to garner vital entrepreneurial lessons from Stephen's wealth of experience and insights. This episode is a treasure trove of knowledge for aspiring artists, established creators, or anyone curious about the business side of the art world.

Today we released part one of our interview with Stephen Yusko. He's a Cleveland-based artist who creates sculptures, furniture, and vessels, using mixed materials combined with forged, machined, and fabricated steel. Stephen also creates public art and jewelry.  He has taught at several schools and universities, including Haystack School of Crafts (ME), Penland School of Crafts (NC), and SUNY Purchase, where he was a Windgate Artist-in-Residence.  Stephen's works have been in exhibits internationally, and among his many awards, he's received four Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Excellence Awards. Join us as we unpack the many aspects of being a working artist!  http://stephenyusko.com/ 

Welcome to a special series of Art Pays Me interviews with the winners of the 2022 Creative Nova Scotia Awards. The awards are presented annually by Arts Nova Scotia and the Creative Nova Scotia Leadership Council. The goal is to celebrate excellence in artistic achievement – notably, the Portia White Prize. Winners of the Prix Grand Pré, the Established Artist, Emerging Artist, Indigenous Artist Recognition and Black Artist Recognition awards as well as the Creative Community Impact Award are also honoured. Collectively, the awards are worth $75,000. Visit artsns.ca to nominate a Nova Scotia based artist or apply for awards and grants for yourself. On this episode I chat with 2022 Creative Nova Scotia Emerging Artist Recognition Award recipient, I'thandi Munro. I'thandi is a multi-disciplinary artist whose love of movement travels through all of her art from metalsmithing to dance. We talk about the value of sticking with the first idea you feel strongly about in the creative process, being inspired by your children and the freedom that mastering your craft through repetition offers artists.

Mary Beth Piper is a metal artist who recently returned home to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Piper works mainly in sterling silver with freshwater pearls and semi-precious gems, as well as reclaimed materials such as copper and wood.They are interested in making unique jewellery that explores humanity's place within the natural world and the constructed nature of identity.Piper's work has been exhibited at the New Brunswick Government House and the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.They attended NBCCD and graduated with a diploma in jewellery and metal arts in 2018, as well as a Bachelor of Arts from Mount Saint Vincent University in 2011. Piper's artistic career blossomed from an existential crisis regarding a political theory thesis and their love for making odd little things, and they've happily managed to merge both those loves into their practice today.Find out more @mb.piper

From the archive: The late artist, jewelry-maker, and metalsmith Daniel Brush, who died on Nov. 26, 2022, at age 75, talks about memory (and interpretations of memory); his deep, monkish engagement with a wide variety of materials; and some of his most valuable tools—breathing, language, and light.

Corkie Bolton knew from the time she was in high school that she wanted to be a jeweller. Today, she's the founder of Corkie Bolton Jewelry, and of Metalsmith Society, a community where jewellers can ask questions and share their knowledge. In this episode, Corkie opens up about her journey to starting her businesses, and she shares some goals she hopes to achieve in the future. Corkie also gives us a preview of her brand new book, “Metalsmith Society's Guide to Making Jewelry.”    Episode Description: Today we'll be talking with Corkie Bolton, founder of Metalsmith Society (1:06) How did you get involved in jewellery making? (2:43) What gave you the push to start your own business? (9:50) How did the Metalsmith Society start? (16:53) What are your brand pillars, and why are they so important to you? (24:30) How did your book come to be? (27:52) Can you tell us about your jewellery business and your goals for it? (36:27) How to connect with Corkie (43:15)   Resources Learn more about Jewellers Academy Watch this episode on YouTube Join the Jewellers Academy Facebook Group  Order Your Copy of “Start and Grow a Profitable Jewellery Business” Corkie Bolton Jewelry Website Metalsmith Society Website Follow Corkie on Instagram and TikTok Preorder “Metalsmith Society's Guide To Making Jewelry”   Find Jewellers Academy on Instagram and Facebook

This week, Kaylene & Anna take a deep breath. Listen in as they talk to their guest, Sakina, about her journey from metalwork to breathwork, the power of somatic therapy, and building community through in-person events.Sakina is a Metalsmith and multi-faceted creatress turned Somatic Breathwork Practitioner. Sakina has built a community of supporters over her 13 years as a metalsmith, who also watched her as a caregiver to her mother, alchemizing that emotion into creation. After her mother's passing, Sakina's own health collapsed and she was left bedridden. Some days all she could do, was breathe. She then found the power of her breath and the mind-body connection, leading her to find Somatic Breathwork and Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy. Sakina is now facilitating sold-out breathwork sessions, defying health diagnoses, and her clients often speak of breakthrough moments and feeling clear and connected after their sessions.Find Sakina at www.entertheinnertemple.com and www.nightbreedcreations.comEpisode Forty Eight Show NotesTarot Card of the Week: Nine of Swords from the Ethereal Visions Illuminated TarotBro Book Review: G'Morning, G'Night: Little Pep Talks for Me & You by Lin-Manuel Miranda

Thank you for tuning in to episode 135! In this episode artist Doug Heifetz talks about his journey to becoming an artist and jewelry designer, making beautiful and surprising work from everyday objects like spoons and forks. He leaves us with a beautiful vision of a better world, and how he inspires these transformations through his work.  To take 20% off any spoon ring on Doug's website, www.lostandforged.com, use code HANDMADECEO20 at checkout.  Makers who have questions about Doug's mobile booth/boutique can contact him through his website. Until next time!  

Blacksmith, Metalsmith, Queen of the Forge— all fitting titles for Atlanta-based artist CORRINA SEPHORA. Introduced to welding before she finished elementary school, Corrina crafted an intentional career path in metal that has allowed her to make her living as an artist for over 25 years. In this episode, Corrina shares how she overcame the barriers to entry of her chosen field and how she manages her team with transformational leadership principles to create towering sculptures and celestial paintings that explore navigation, transformation, love and loss.Find Corrina:Website: corrinasephora.comInstagram: @corrinasephora.metalartistLinkedin: corrina-sephora-mensoffFacebook: corrina.mensoffYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC69uM-WCFUCx4GwEDSVOi5w Mentioned:Transformational workshops, Landmark Wisdom (featured panelist) Goat Farm, Atlanta GA, artist community (learn) Diamondback Art Surfaces , wood panels (buy) Alyson Stanfield, art business coach (learn) Louise Nevelson, sculptor (learn) Louise Bourgeois, sculptor (learn) Kiki Smith, sculptor (learn)James Turrell, light and space artist (learn) Flowing is Water, Corrina Sephora fairytale, video (watch) A Reckless Insistence on Beauty, Elaine Sutton (read) Chastain Arts Center, 2022 Spring Show (visit) Spalding Nix Fine Art, gallery  Atlanta GA (explore) Blue Heron Nature Preserve, Roswell, GA (explore) Find Me, Kristy Darnell Battani: Website:    https://www.kristybattani.com Instagram:  kristybattaniart Facebook:  kristybattaniart Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please take a moment to leave a rating and a comment: https://lovethepodcast.com/artishplunge   Music:"Surf Guitar Madness," Alexis Messier, Licensed by PremiumBeat.comSupport the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/artishplunge)

Hobbies are exhausting. I know because I have one, it's this podcast, and I'm literally tired all the time. Now just imagine having enough hobbies to own and operate 17 [seventeen] different Instagram accounts. This week on the pod, I'm joined by my internet acquaintance turned real-life friend Sigra to chat about all of her various avocations which range from bands to bugs. She's 10x more interesting than I'll ever be, so trust me—you won't want to miss this one besties!Get silly with us on social:FOLLOW THE PODCASTInstagram: @pessimisticatbestFacebook: @pessimisticatbestWebsite: pessimisticatbest.comFOLLOW SAMANTHAInstagram: @samgeorgsonTwitter: @samgeorgsonWebsite: samanthageorgson.comFOLLOW SIGRAInstagram: @__sigraTwitter: @sirsigraBand: @mqbs.coBugs: @27.bonesSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/pessimisticatbest)

What you'll learn in this episode: How New York City Jewelry Week supports the jewelry industry year-round Why the best way to reach potential jewelry consumers is through education, not through a hard sell How the pandemic helped Bella and other jewelry educators get their message out to more people Why Bella and her partner JB wanted New York City Jewelry Week to feel like opening a jewelry box How you can support the upcoming 2022 New York City Jewelry Week About Bella Neyman Bella Neyman is the co-founder of New York City Jewelry Week. She is also an independent curator and journalist specializing in contemporary jewelry. Most recently she was on the Curatorial Advisory Committee for 45 Stories in Jewelry: 1947 to Now at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Since graduating with a Master's Degree in Decorative Arts and Design History from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum & Parsons, The New School for Design in 2008, she has worked for some of New York City's leading design galleries. Bella's articles have been published in The New York Times, American Craft, and the Magazine Antiques. She is also a frequent contributor to Metalsmith magazine. Bella is on the Board of Art Jewelry Forum. She resides with her family in Brooklyn.  Additional Resources: Bella's Instagram NYC Jewelry Week website NYC Jewelry Week Instagram Links for two of Bella's upcoming classes:   Studio Jewelry: From Mid-century to the Present starting Monday, March 14th!! https://education.christies.com/courses/continuing-education/short-courses/studio-jewelry-from-mid-century-to-present Jewelry Jaunts- Mondays, April 25th - May 23rd  11am-12:30pm For this class, registrants can sign-up with code 'EARLY' to receive a 10% discount.  https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eiy0iu2pe3f8ecba&oseq=&c=&ch= Transcript: Now in its fifth year, New York City Jewelry Week has changed the American jewelry landscape for good. The annual jewelry show is much more than just shopping—with workshops, educational opportunities, and showcases of every type of jewelry imaginable, there is something for every jewelry lover. NYC Jewelry Week co-founder Bella Neyman joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what she and her partner JB Jones have in store for 2022; why they want the week to feel like opening up a jewelry box; and how you can support NYC Jewelry Week's programs. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Here at the Jewelry Journey, we're about all things jewelry. With that in mind, I wanted to let you know about an upcoming jewelry conference, which is “Beyond Boundaries: Jewelry of the Americas.” It's sponsored by the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, or, as it's otherwise known, ASJRA. The conference takes place virtually on Saturday and Sunday May 21 and May 22, which is around the corner. For details on the program and the speakers, go to www.jewelryconference.com. Non-members are welcome. I have to say that I attended this conference in person for several years, and it's one of my favorite conferences. It's a real treat to be able to sit in your pajamas or in comfies in your living room and listen to some extraordinary speakers. So, check it out. Register at www.jewelryconference.com. See you there.   This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, my guest is Bella Neyman, a woman who wears many hats in the world of jewelry. The primary one is as a mover and shaker among jewelry professionals. Her other hats include jewelry curator, historian, author, educator and cofounder of New York City Jewelry Week, or NYCJW as it's known. If you haven't heard part one, go to TheJewelryJourney.com.    Welcome back. As a curator, I know you curated a glass jewelry exhibit several years ago. Are you thinking about anything else right now? Is there anything on the horizon?   Bella: At some point, I started working at a jewelry gallery—this was prior to Jewelry Week—and I had the opportunity there to curate many shows. That was essentially my role there. Since then, Jewelry Week takes up so much of my time. The lectures are great because I can do them in spurts, but I don't really have the time that curating an exhibition requires. I was part of the curatorial committee for “45 Stories in Jewelry.”   Sharon: At MAD, the Museum of Art and Design.   Bella: MAD, yeah. I was part of that, and that was incredible. It was an incredible experience and I loved it. I have been asked to curate some exhibitions, some gallery shows outside Jewelry Week. It's a bit hard because Jewelry Week takes about 10 months to put together, so it becomes too challenging to focus on.   Sharon: Just to make sure everybody knows, it's November 18 or 14 to 20.   Bella: November 14.   Sharon: Mark your calendars. It's in November, and that's around the corner when you think of all the work that has to go into it. Are you partnering with anybody this year? I know you have in the past. Are you doing it yourself? How is that working?   Bella: We are going into our fifth year, and JB Jones is my partner. She's the other half of New York City Jewelry Week, and we're really excited about this year. As I said, it's our fifth year, so it's a big deal for us. This is the time of year when we start thinking about what the program will look like. We're already having conversations with some of our previous sponsors and partners who come in on some of the different initiatives we work on throughout the year.    I think what most people don't recognize or realize, I should say, is that New York City Jewelry Week, while we have this one week in November, we work year-round, not just on planning the week, but on supporting the industry in ways that are meaningful to us. We have two platforms. One is called Here We Are, which is our platform dedicated to equity and inclusivity in the jewelry industry. We have another platform called One for the Future, which focuses on mentorship for emerging creatives in the jewelry industry. We spend a lot of time focused on both of those platforms. Education is also incredibly important to us, so we partner with the 92nd Street Y, for example, on educating youth about opportunities in jewelry post-high school graduation. There are lot of things we work on even before we get to November.   Now is when we are starting to have conversations with jewelers, with artists, with curators. This is really exciting for us because everything is fresh and everybody's buzzing with ideas. It's really great to see how important and meaningful Jewelry Week has become, especially to independent jewelers. So many of them plan for it throughout the year. Last year, so many jewelers approached us and said, “O.K., for 2022, this is what I'm doing.” It's great to start having these conversations with them now because, yes, it's around the corner, but at the same time, there are so many things that can still happen between now and then. So, it's really exciting for us.   Sharon: I'm in awe and amazed that it's your fifth year. I can't believe you created this and kept it going. It's amazing. What made you and JB decide to start it?   Bella: We didn't realize how much work it was going to be. I think if we knew back then what we know now, we might have reconsidered. In all seriousness, the reason we did it is, first, I know this sounds cliche, but we love jewelry. We really love and value the independent voices and creatives that make this industry what it is. It's not easy. Being a jeweler is not easy, so we wanted to create a platform that would celebrate jewelers, that would make it a little bit easier for them to reach a consumer. There's a lot of competition. There's a lot of jewelry out there, so we wanted to make sure we did something that would support them.    There are other examples of jewelry weeks around the world. We're not the first ones, certainly. My exposure to jewelry weeks came from the European model, going to SCHMUCK, going to HOYA, going to Paris for Cours de Bijoux. I saw their festivals and the energy, and that to me was so wonderful. We wanted to do it in New York, but again, we wanted to do something that included all different types of jewelry, because we really believe in providing something for everyone. That's important. We all come to jewelry from different places. Jewelry's a powerful thing. We all adorn our bodies in different, meaningful ways, and we wanted to create something that was for everyone. Our motto is “Jewelry for All,” and we really believe that. That's why Jewelry Week, as we curated it, is very different from other jewelry weeks, because it's fine jewelry; it's costume jewelry; it's antique. It's jewelry from non-precious materials.    If you open up a jewelry box, most of the time you have different things in there. You have things you've picked up on the street. You have things that were given to you by your partner, something passed down from your grandmother, some things you love, some things you don't, some things you want to recreate into something you're going to wear every day. That's what we wanted. We wanted it to be like a jewelry box. You open it up, and there's this explosion of different things and a sense of discovery.   The last five years have been incredibly difficult, to be honest with you, because we're very grassroots. We fundraise. Every year, in the beginning of the year, we start fundraising for the year ahead. JB and I don't take a salary. I've talked about this before, but we don't take a salary. We have an incredible group of volunteers and consultants we work with. Most people volunteer their time. That has been one of the most beautiful things about this week, and we hope it's made a difference. I think it has, because, as I said, I have jewelers reaching out to me a year in advance saying, “Next year, I'm doing a solo show during Jewelry Week.” That has been really special for both JB and me.   Sharon: That's exciting. I don't have all the experience you have in terms of going to different shows, but the ones I have gone to, the way New York City Jewelry Week is different is like you were saying. You cover equity and diversity and all these things. To me, everything else is a show. It's like, “How much can I sell? Here's my table of wares.”    Bella: Yes, absolutely. We believe to reach a consumer, you have to do it through education first and foremost. For us, it's not about the hard sell. It has never been about how many trunk shows we can pad this one week with. It has always been about beautifully curated moments. It's been about intimate settings. It's been about exhibitions. It's been about access. It's been about giving people an up-close look into work that maybe they weren't familiar with. It's about opening the doors to a museum collection. It's about having lectures and talks and workshops, and it's really meant to be a discovery.    Yes, it's in New York, but it's more than that. New York is home to so many different voices and different cultures, and that's what we want to celebrate. Everybody says to us, even if they're coming from another part of the world, “Oh my god, I want to do this in New York,” because New York has always been the pinnacle. It's this city. If you've made it in New York, then that's it; you can make it anywhere. As cliche as that sounds, it's really true. We do have a lot of New York-based designers who participate, but we also have artists coming from all over the world. We help them do pop-up spaces, and they do exhibitions and talks and panels. It's a great week for discovery.    Sharon: Wow! It sounds like it. I'm thinking about how hard it must be trying to find even one space to put on a panel. How about sponsors? Do you find more sponsors now by saying, “This is real. It's not just a flash in the pan.” Do you find more are coming to you?   Bella: Yes and no, absolutely. We still have to send a deck, but we do have a lot of returning sponsors, which has been wonderful. We really believe in building relationships, and we've been fortunate to have some great sponsors over the years who keep coming back: 1stDibs, eBay. They've been wonderful.    It's also been great to find new partners and sponsors to work with every year. We welcome that, just like every year we want to work with new and different designers and creatives and retailers, but the last two years have been incredibly difficult because of the pandemic. Like other small business, we've obviously felt it. Budgets aren't what they were, marketing budgets and production budgets and event budgets. Events were cut and, essentially, we're an event. In some cases, it's been easier; in some cases, it's been very difficult. We're optimistic and we're still here, but the only way we can continue growing and continue existing is if we continue getting sponsorship dollars. So, if you're listening and you're interested in becoming a sponsor, please reach out to us. You can always reach out to us on Instagram, or you can email me. We'd be happy to have a conversation.   Sharon: There's a lot of exposure for your sponsor, so it's definitely something to consider. You're doing it virtually and in person.   Bella: Yes. Last year we did a hybrid model, and we're going to be doing it again. It's a wonderful way to reach a broader audience. It's also a wonderful way for us to include artists and designers who might not be able to participate otherwise. Some of my favorite moments of the last two years were from the virtual programing. We did this incredible program of jewelers from South Africa two years ago. They recorded a fashion jewelry show for us. Last year we also did a presentation with Wallace Chan. Wallace Chan released a new book last year. There were, I think, five different authors for that book, and they're all in different parts of the world. What a great way to have Wallace do an intro and be present and to have these authors be present. Again, we reach a much broader audience that way, too.   Sharon: It's such an entrepreneurial endeavor, Jewelry Week. It's creating something out of nothing. Is this something that runs in your blood? Is it in your family?   Bella: Not at all, absolutely not at all. I think JB and I were so excited and so passionate about this, and we thought, “Let's just do it.” But no, no entrepreneurs in my immediate family.   Sharon: I realize it's a lot of work, but you must be so proud of what you've done going into your fifth year. That is amazing and awe-inspiring.    Bella: Yes, I guess. I never think about it until it's over, until that Sunday in November when I look around and think, “Oh my god, that was magic. We did that.” Until I get to that point, it's a lot of hard work.   Sharon: Watching your posts on Instagram, it seems like it's never over. You have a lot of after-marketing, too.   Bella: Yeah, it's never over. Again, our goal is to support the industry year-round. It's never over because, for the jewelers who we partner with and are part of Jewelry Week, it doesn't end for them. Jewelry Week is just one week. They're making work, they're selling work, and we want to be there to keep shining a light on them. Our work is never done.   Sharon: Let's say you go to SCHMUCK or to another gallery and you see a jeweler you've never seen before, do you say, “Hey, would you like to be part of Jewelry Week?” Has that happened?   Bella: Absolutely, all the time. That's actually how year one happened, because nobody knew about us. Now we have people who apply and are participating. We also curate a large portion of it. We invite people, but people can also apply to participate. I think for me, that's also been one of the most challenging things with the pandemic. I haven't had the opportunity to travel to see someone's studio. I haven't had the chance to be inspired in the way I would be otherwise. But yes, all the time, we see work we love. JB is always searching and researching on social media, discovering new voices, new work. We try to make sure the program is different from year to year. If somebody showed last year, we probably wouldn't invite them back unless there was a real good reason to. So yes, we're always looking, always discovering, always inviting.   Sharon: It's a great calling card in so many ways. I'm imagining how it was the first year. Potential sponsors were probably saying, “Yeah, come back to me when it's bigger."   Bella: Yeah, absolutely. People always want to see you prove yourself, especially when it comes to giving their time and money. They always want to make sure you're serious about what you're doing. To be honest with you, we won part of the jewelry industry. Most people in the jewelry industry didn't know us unless they were in the contemporary jewelry world, and then they already had a sense of who we were. Otherwise, it was like, “Who are these two women? What is this they're trying to do? What's a jewelry week? Why do we need it?” There are some partners who—for example, Bergdorf Goodman has always been this bastion of cool, chic, New York glamor. They've been with us from the beginning as a partner. There are some individuals who believed in us and have been with us for five years. Other people were like, “Yeah, let me see how it goes and come back to me,” and that's fine too. We get it. We understand.   Sharon: Can somebody be a real member of the jewelry industry without being in New York or London or Paris? We're in Los Angeles. Not that there aren't great jewelers out here, it's just not New York. What do you think?   Bella: I think you can find success no matter where you are, especially in this day and age, with everything being done virtually, with business being conducted over Instagram. I know designers living in New York who don't produce their jewelry in New York; they produce it in L.A. I think you absolutely can if you're passionate about what you're doing, if you have a vision, if you have a business you build right. Everything takes time, but I think if you love it, if you believe in what you are doing and if it drives you, then you can be successful no matter where you are.   Sharon: You certainly have been successful. Have we covered everything? You have such a wide variety. Is there something else you want to mention?   Bella: I would say that if you're interested in what we're doing, you should follow us on Instagram. It's @NYCJewelryWeek. That's also our website. Over the last five years, we've grown quite a bit. We have a wonderful blog—it's really interesting and informative—called Future Heirloom. Even when there isn't a program up on our website, there's always great content. I encourage everyone to check out our Instagram and to go to our website.   If you're interested to know what classes I'm teaching, you can follow me on Instagram. It's just my name, @BellaNeyman. I'll always share what I'm up to. And just reach out. We're not a large corporation. We are two individuals who love what we do, so we hope people feel comfortable being in touch, and I should say most people do. They tell us what they love, what they hate, if they need help, even if they've never meet us. Most people feel comfortable chatting with us, so stay in touch.   Sharon: We'll have links to your social media on the website when we post the podcast. I do have to say that I've discovered a lot of your courses and other things you do because I follow you. I'll say, “Oh, she's teaching that,” or “She's doing that.” That's great.    Bella: Thank you.   Sharon: Thank you so much for being with us today.   Bella: My pleasure.   Sharon: It's been great. Thank you.   Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.  

What you'll learn in this episode: How New York City Jewelry Week supports the jewelry industry year-round Why the best way to reach potential jewelry consumers is through education, not through a hard sell How the pandemic helped Bella and other jewelry educators get their message out to more people Why Bella and her partner JB wanted New York City Jewelry Week to feel like opening a jewelry box How you can support the upcoming 2022 New York City Jewelry Week About Bella Neyman Bella Neyman is the co-founder of New York City Jewelry Week. She is also an independent curator and journalist specializing in contemporary jewelry. Most recently she was on the Curatorial Advisory Committee for 45 Stories in Jewelry: 1947 to Now at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Since graduating with a Master's Degree in Decorative Arts and Design History from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum & Parsons, The New School for Design in 2008, she has worked for some of New York City's leading design galleries. Bella's articles have been published in The New York Times, American Craft, and the Magazine Antiques. She is also a frequent contributor to Metalsmith magazine. Bella is on the Board of Art Jewelry Forum. She resides with her family in Brooklyn.  Additional Resources: Bella's Instagram NYC Jewelry Week website NYC Jewelry Week Instagram Links for two of Bella's upcoming classes:   Studio Jewelry: From Mid-century to the Present starting Monday, March 14th!! https://education.christies.com/courses/continuing-education/short-courses/studio-jewelry-from-mid-century-to-present Jewelry Jaunts- Mondays, April 25th - May 23rd  11am-12:30pm For this class, registrants can sign-up with code 'EARLY' to receive a 10% discount.  https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eiy0iu2pe3f8ecba&oseq=&c=&ch= Transcript: Now in its fifth year, New York City Jewelry Week has changed the American jewelry landscape for good. The annual jewelry show is much more than just shopping—with workshops, educational opportunities, and showcases of every type of jewelry imaginable, there is something for every jewelry lover. NYC Jewelry Week co-founder Bella Neyman joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what she and her partner JB Jones have in store for 2022; why they want the week to feel like opening up a jewelry box; and how you can support NYC Jewelry Week's programs. Read the episode transcript here.    Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Here at the Jewelry Journey, we're about all things jewelry. With that in mind, I wanted to let you know about an upcoming jewelry conference, which is “Beyond Boundaries: Jewelry of the Americas.” It's sponsored by the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, or, as it's otherwise known, ASJRA. The conference takes place virtually on Saturday and Sunday May 21 and May 22, which is around the corner. For details on the program and the speakers, go to www.jewelryconference.com. Non-members are welcome. I have to say that I attended this conference in person for several years, and it's one of my favorite conferences. It's a real treat to be able to sit in your pajamas or in comfies in your living room and listen to some extraordinary speakers. So, check it out. Register at www.jewelryconference.com. See you there.   This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week. Today, my guest is Bella Neyman, a woman who wears many hats in the world of jewelry. The primary one is as a mover and shaker among jewelry professionals. Her other hats include jewelry curator, historian, author, educator and cofounder of New York City Jewelry Week, or NYCJW as it's known. Bella joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast several years ago talking about NYCJW when it was in its infancy. Today, we'll hear more about her own jewelry journey, what's in store for NYCJW this year, and more about her background. Bella, welcome to the program.   Bella: Thank you so much, Sharon. Thank you for having me back again. It's exciting to be here. Thank you.   Sharon: You're involved in so many things, it was so difficult to write an intro.    Bella: When I hear that, it makes me think, “Wow, is she talking about me?” I don't know. I do the things I love. Sometimes I forget I do so many things.   Sharon: Did you set out to do that? Did you know that when you became a jewelry professional? I'm sort of backing into this, but did you know that you were going to be involved in so many things when you became a jewelry professional? Or did you have one specific thing in mind?   Bella: I had no idea. To be honest with you, I didn't really know that I would end up in jewelry. I went to Cooper Hewitt/Parsons for their Decorative Arts and Design master's program. I never took the jewelry course. I was interested in design and decorative arts. Getting ready to have this conversation with you, what I realized is that I didn't find jewelry; jewelry found me. I'm glad it did, obviously, because I love what I'm doing, but I did not think jewelry was going to be my focus at all, actually.   Sharon: Were you a designer? Were you artistic as a kid?   Bella: No, not at all, and I'm still not. I can sew a button. I can draw a straight line, but I'm completely not artistic. I've always loved art. I grew up around it. I was actually born in Russia—geographically, I should say I was born in Ukraine, but I'm Russian. I moved here when I was seven years old. I moved to America; I moved to New York.    My parents were always interested in the arts. My mother was a librarian at an art museum in Odessa, which is the city where I was born. I am an only kid, so my parents always took me with them to wherever they were going. My father is a collector, so I always grew up around it. When we came to this country, because my parents didn't have anyone to leave me with, I always went with them everywhere. That's how I'm raising my daughter now. She goes with me everywhere, and we try to expose her to so many different things.    So, I was always interested in the arts, but I never thought I would have a career in the arts. My parents, while they were always really encouraging, I don't think they thought I was going to end up in the arts either.    Sharon: Did they support you if you wanted, or were they more like “Be an engineer”?   Bella: Basically, yes. They were like, “You should do the thing that's going to make you money,” because we came to this country and didn't have much. I went to a public school. The college I went to is a city college. So, they really wanted me to do something that was going to make me a good living, but they also believed I should follow my heart and do what is going to make me happy.    Even when I went to college, I didn't know what I was going to do. I was thinking, “Well, maybe psychology.” That was a popular thing at the time, but I took an art history course, and I was hooked. My bachelor's was in arts administration. I knew that I wanted to remain in the arts, but I wanted to do something where I was able to approach the art world with a sense of practicality, with a sense of having some knowledge of business skills, marketing, finance, because I always knew I wasn't going to be an artist. As I said, I'm not creative. So, I wanted to approach it from a place where I could support myself and support others.   Sharon: Arts administration, that sounds intriguing. That sounds like a great foundation for what you're talking about.   Bella: Exactly, something practical. Then, of course, for my master's degree, I decided that I wanted to go into the decorative arts, not into the fine arts. Again, thinking about what I could do to contribute to this thing I'm going to be embarking on studying. I just felt like the fine arts were saturated. There aren't any work opportunities. I thought, “What am I going to contribute to this field that hasn't already been done? There are so many other voices. Why do I need to do this? Why should I pursue this?”   I always loved the decorative arts and I thought, “You know what? This seems like more of a niche, and maybe I can do something that would be more worthwhile.” I was thinking about, “O.K., can I be a curator? Can I be a writer? Can I work in a gallery? Can I work in an auction house?” Always thinking practically about how I could make a living doing this thing I love, I ended up in this master's program, which I absolutely loved. I chose it because I can work with objects. The two years that I spent there—we were at the Cooper Hewitt—were an incredible experience, but I never took a jewelry class.   As I said, jewelry found me, because when I finished my master's degree, I was incredibly fortunate to find a job right away. I started working in a decorative arts gallery called Primavera Gallery. They had just moved to Chelsea. This was 2007, so Chelsea was really developing. Audrey and Haim, who owned the gallery, had an incredible collection. At that point, it had been in business for about 30 years, and they have an incredible collection not just of furniture and glass and ceramics and metalwork spanning the 20th century, but they also had an incredible collection of jewelry. Again, 20th century was the focus. They had really important signed pieces by many prominent European makers and designers. They also had great Georgian jewelry and Victorian jewelry because Audrey was always so passionate about jewelry. It was something she really loved. So, that was the first time I got to handle jewelry and start to appreciate it and look at it as an art form.   Sharon: That's a great way to start out. Is Primavera still in business?   Bella: At this point, Audrey and Haim have retired. I think they're probably still open by appointment. They still have a collection, but they're no longer in Chelsea.   Sharon: I've never been, but I've always heard they were a fabulous gallery.   Bella: Yeah, it was a great place to work. They were one of the first to sell Art Deco. When they were starting out, a lot of the pieces were still coming out of the original homes, the families that purchased these pieces. They were collecting them in the 70s, when there was a huge revival of Art Deco. So, it was a great place to work.   Sharon: Wow! I'm always envious of people who got into the Cooper Hewitt in that program. I wish they had something out here like that. Tell us, were you hooked on jewelry from there?   Bella: Yes, absolutely, I became hooked on jewelry there. As I said, it was the first time I was able to handle it and start to appreciate it. I think Audrey's stories about the pieces in their collection sparked an interest in me. I was always thinking about what else I could be doing. It's funny, because when you're in school, you're so busy trying to keep up with the curriculum. Once you graduate, you almost feel at a loss, like, “I have all this free time on my hands.” I really wanted to start writing, and I came upon a piece in their collection that I absolutely fell in love with. It was a necklace by the jeweler Sah Oved, and I wanted to investigate who this woman was.   Sharon: I have to interrupt you—who was the piece by?   Bella: Sah Oved.   Sharon: Oh, Sah Oved, wow!   Bella: I had started keeping a blog because, as I said, this is like 2007, 2008. Blogs were quite popular. I started a blog so I could write and have something to present should I ever find myself ready to pitch an editor, because I really wanted to write.   I found this piece by Sah Oved in Audrey's collection. I wanted to know more about it, and that was the first time I wanted to explore somebody's jewelry story. Who was this woman? Why was this piece made? Why is it so different from anything I had seen? That really is what started it for me. I wrote this article. It was my first publication in a magazine, and I was hooked. I was really, really hooked and, as I said, I think jewelry found me.    Sharon: I'm curious because so much of Moshe's work, you can't tell the difference. How did you know this was Sah Oved versus Moshe?   Bella: Yeah, Sah was the jeweler. Moshe, his contribution to jewelry has been the animal rings that come on the auction scene every once in a while. Sah was really the jeweler. He was this eccentric businessman. He was a great supporter of the arts, but he didn't make that much jewelry. She was his partner. She worked with him at the Cameo Corner, which was his shop. She did a lot of repairs for him; she did custom work, but she had been interested in jewelry prior to working for him. She had her own little studio in London. So, part of the challenge was to find out who this woman was, because not much had been written about her.   Sharon: There's still not much about her.   Bella: There still isn't. I'm hoping to change that, but yes, there still isn't.   Sharon: I know you gave a talk last year to the Association for the Study of Jewelry and Related Arts, which was fabulous because nobody ever talks about them, really.   Bella: No, they don't.   Sharon: The last time I saw a piece by you, it was in an antiques magazine. You also teach. How did you start teaching? Tell us about that.   Bella: The teaching is something that is pretty recent. That's been a product of the pandemic. What happened between leaving Primavera Gallery and finding my way to where I am today is that I also discovered contemporary studio jewelry, which is how you and I know each other through Art Jewelry Forum. I was always interested in finding work and artists whose work speaks to me and sharing their stories, whether it be through writing, through lecturing, through New York City Jewelry Week, which I know we'll get to later on. That's what I've always been interested in, sharing those stories.    I teach at two institutions. I lecture at the 92nd Street Y and at Christie's. I love jewelry, so for me, it has been wonderful—especially during the pandemic, when everybody was doing everything virtually and we were glued to our computer screens—to not only my share my jewelry knowledge, but also to broaden my jewelry knowledge. I teach a wide variety of courses. For example, next week, I'm starting a class at the Y on costume jewelry. In the past, I've taught classes on women designers in the 20th century. I've done an overview of jewelry history in the 20th century. For me, it's always been about sharing my knowledge, but also broadening my own knowledge. There's so much information out there, and to be able to take that information, make it digestible for my students and to hopefully inspire them and pass on my love of jewelry to them has been really special, especially during the pandemic, when it's been hard to be out and do things that we love.   Sharon: I'm really looking forward to this class on costume jewelry because nobody talks about costume except Bakelite maybe once in a while. Tell us about it. How did you decide to do that?   Bella: Absolutely. I've taught this class covering 100 years of jewelry and this other class on women designers, and when I put my courses together, I want to make sure I present the full scope of jewelry, all different types of jewelry. As I mentioned, while I worked for Audrey and Haim and worked with these important signed pieces and fine jewelry, in my personal life, I'm much more interested in contemporary studio jewelry and jewelry made from non-precious materials. So, when I teach these classes, I make sure I include all different types of jewelry because, to be quite honest with you, I think jewelry, regardless of what it's made from, it all informs. It informs each other, whether it's fine or studio or costume. So, when I put these classes together, I always want to make sure I cover a broad span of different types of jewelry.    When I was working on the women designers course, I realized that a lot of women designers started out in costume jewelry, much more so than in fine jewelry, which has traditionally been a very male-dominated industry. But in costume jewelry there were a lot of female designers, and that sparked my interest. I've also been interested in fashion jewelry and fashion designers like Coco Chanel or Elsa Schiaparelli, who used costume jewelry historically to build their own image or to embellish their own collections. I was interested in that relationship as well, and that's how that class came about. You're right; not much has been done on costume jewelry. There are some publications, of course, but I haven't seen any classes. It was of interest to me, so I assumed it would be of interest to others.   Sharon: It's unusual, because you can find other courses on jewelry history which are great—it's refreshing, I guess is the word.   Bella: Good. I hope everyone signs up. The class starts next Thursday, February 24 at the 92nd Street Y. It's a virtual class. It's a six-week course. It's a little bit longer than my usual courses because the other thing I've enjoyed is having guest speakers join me in my classes. With everything being virtual, that's something that's easy. So, I have some fun speakers lined up as well. I'm really excited for it.   Sharon: I'm sure it's going to be great. Do you think you'll continue at the Y with jewelry classes?   Bella: Yeah, I think so. This is now my third course for them, and it's great. I love it. I enjoy meeting all the different individuals who sign up for the courses. I feel like we end up becoming friends. They're always so eager to reach out, and the class is really wonderful. They're virtual, so we can reach more students.   Then, of course, at Christie's, we've also been able to do classes. I do virtual classes at Christie's, but I have recently started doing an in-person course called Jewelry Jaunts. It's really nice to be among other jewelry lovers, to be out looking at jewelry, trying it on and picking it up, investigating.   Sharon: That sounds great. What are you teaching virtually at Christie's? I didn't know you were teaching virtually for them.   Bella: At Christie's, I teach two courses. One of them is starting in March, and that's on the history of studio jewelry. Then the second course I've taught there is on artist jewelers. All these classes inform each other, as jewelry does. I look at a lot of the classes I teach as a part one and a part two, so, if you're interested in studio jewelry, there's a little bit of an overlap. That's why I wanted to add this other class focusing on artist jewelers. The virtual studio course is going to run in March, and the class I'm teaching now, as I said, is in person. It's fun. We'll hopefully do that in the spring again.   Sharon: Wow! You're busy.   Bella: I'm busy, but at the same time, it's been such a challenging couple of years, so it's a nice way to distract yourself.   Sharon: It sounds like they're things you might not have been able to do or focus on. From my perspective, you cover everything from antique to art jewelry, but you're saying you like contemporary jewelry. I call it art jewelry. That's what you like, but you teach everything it seems. Is that what you're saying?   Bella: I love jewelry. When it comes to the things I collect or the things I covet, most of that is contemporary studio jewelry or art jewelry, absolutely, but I love all jewelry.   Sharon: I like that word, covet.    This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.

What you'll learn in this episode: How Cindi helped the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston secure one of the country's most important art jewelry collections  Why jewelry is a hybrid of craft and art that doesn't fit just in one category Why the art world began to question the value of craft in the 80s, and why that perspective is changing now Why museum and gallery visitors shouldn't ask themselves, “Would I wear this?” when looking at art jewelry About Cindi Strauss Cindi Strauss is the Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design and Assistant Director, Programming at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). She received her BA with honors in art history from Hamilton College and her MA in the history of decorative arts from the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons School of Design. At the MFAH, Cindi is responsible for the acquisition, research, publication, and exhibition of post-1900 decorative arts, design, and craft. Jewelry is a mainstay of Cindi's curatorial practice. In addition to regularly curating permanent collection installations that include contemporary jewelry from the museum's collection, she has organized several exhibitions that are either devoted solely to jewelry or include jewelry in them. These include: Beyond Ornament: Contemporary Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2003–2004); Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2007); Liquid Lines: Exploring the Language of Contemporary Metal (2011); and Beyond Craft: Decorative Arts from the Leatrice S. and Melvin B. Eagle Collection (2014). Cindi has authored or contributed to catalogs and journals on jewelry, craft, and design topics, and has been a frequent lecturer at museums nationwide. She also serves on the editorial advisory committee for Metalsmith magazine. Additional Resources: Museum of Fine Arts Houston Transcript: For the uninitiated, jewelry, art and craft may seem like three distinct (and perhaps, unfortunately, hierarchical) entities. But Cindi Strauss, Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, wants us to break down these barriers and appreciate the value of jewelry as an art in its own right. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she helped MFA Houston establish one of the largest art jewelry collections at an American museum; why jewelry artists should be proud of their studio craft roots; and why wearability shouldn't be the first consideration when looking at art jewelry. Read the episode transcript here.        Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. Today, our guest is Cindi Strauss, the Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. If you haven't heard part one, please go to TheJewelryJourney.com. Welcome back.    I remember having a conversation where I did not know what you meant—I know now, but an encyclopedic museum. What does that mean?   Cindi: It means a museum that collects and displays art from antiquities to the present and covers—I'm not going to say all, because one could never say all as in completely—but covers very thoroughly all world cultures. We collect across the board in terms of types of art making, so the MFA in Houston is the only encyclopedic institution in our region. We're in the south-central region, if you will, so we were founded on the idea of the big institutions that were founded in the late 19th century in the Northeast and Midwest. That was the ambition.   Sharon: Well, it's Houston. I presume it's the biggest. You only go for big, I presume. You're big into crafts in terms of studying. Where do they fit into all of this? Where do you cross the line from jewelry to craft? Is jewelry is a craft? How do you see it?   Cindi: I separate design from craft—these are generalizations, but you can separate the handmade from the machine-made or the industrial-made. There are certainly design objects that have the hand as part of them. I think art jewelry is absolutely part of the studio craft movement. It comes out of that history. It's a vital history and has to do with material usage and development, handcraft skills, making things on a one-off basis, making one-of-a-kind pieces. Today, of course, we have this wonderful hybridization, which allows for a type of creativity that is unbridled. So, you will have things that have industrially based materials, or people making works in limited editions, but at its heart, it comes out of a studio practice and a studio history.   All of it, as far as we consider it at the MFAH, is art. It's art in the same way that photography is, that painting is. It's exhibited on an equal plane, and you see that throughout our new building. There are departments, specific galleries on the second floor. I have both craft and design galleries, but the third floor is completely interdisciplinary, so you get to make those connections and see the dialogue between jewelry and anything else, for that matter. At our institution, it's a wonderful way to have your cake and eat it too, because the possibilities are endless.    One of the things I have been fortunate with, both with art jewelry and our ceramics collection—because they have both been a part of the institution now for almost 20 years—is that I'm not on a steep learning curve. My colleagues aren't on a steep learning curve of understanding the tenets of the field and how jewelry connects and crosses over; it just is. That is an amazing place to be.   Sharon: As you were saying that, I was thinking about how you cover this in your mind, let alone physically. There are so many areas you're talking about.    Cindi: Yeah, and it's only one part of what I do, because I am responsible, basically, for 20th and 21st-century decorative arts, craft and design. Now, I'm really lucky that we have an endowed position for a craft curator, who was formerly Anna Walker. Joining us at the end of this month is Elizabeth Essner, who may be familiar to some of your audience because she has written on art jewelry and worked on art jewelry exhibitions. That's terrific, because she is completely dedicated to that material.    There's another curator in my department; we split the late 19th century and early 20th century material based on our own interests and expertise. She otherwise does the historical material, but she does Art Nouveau; I do Art Deco. She does Arts and Crafts; I do Reform. That 20 or 30-year period when there are so many styles of movements happening, we share that. We have a terrific curatorial assistant who helps, but I love the fact that I don't work on only one media group or timeframe or one geographic area. It allows me to see more broadly. It allows me to make a lot of connections that I wouldn't be able to make if I my job description were more solid. Frankly, you never get bored.    Sharon: It sounds very exciting.   Cindi: There's always more to learn and see.   Sharon: It sounds thrilling to cover all that. I'm wondering; it seems that some art jewelers or any kind of jeweler, like studios jewelers, they might think “craftsperson” or “that's craft” is a little pejorative.    Cindi: I don't think so anymore. That was something that—from my perspective and my personal opinion—throughout the birth and few decades of the studio craft movement, it was held in high esteem. There were galleries that showed important painters and sculptors next to ceramists and jewelers and such. In the 80s, when the art world changed dramatically, the go-go 80s, a lot of these divisions started happening. That was when the big “Is craft art?” question came. It did such damage to the field because artists were demoralized; collectors started getting defensive. Looking back on it, it's clear those questions and divisions did damage to the field.   By the time I was in graduate school in the early 90s, there was a pause on that silo-ing and splitting. So, I did not, from a graduate school perspective, learn any of those divisions. It was all decorative arts. Craft and design was all one field, but I think, certainly in the past 10 years, if not longer than that, that division, that question has been put to rest. I think from an academic perspective, from an artistic perspective, I hope from a collecting perspective, that that has all been pushed behind. It is just art.    If you look at what's happening with major galleries, they're showing ceramics; they're showing art jewelry along with their contemporary art program. In a way, that harkens back to the 70s and 60s. The market prices haven't quite caught up to where they should be based on the artistic quality of a craft artist. That will, I think, take a little more time. But every other metric, looking at reviews, art magazines, exhibitions, the big galleries that get a lot of press, they're showing fiber; they're showing ceramics. They're even starting to show jewelry. So, I hope everything has moved so far that that question gets put to bed.    I've always felt that, in this case, art jewelry should be incredibly proud of its history and its field individually and not spend all of its time worrying about what the larger art world thinks. The larger art world is interested and that's terrific, but that should not be its only goal. I think it is important and worthy as an artistic movement, statement, something to collect, etc. on its own. A lot of the encyclopedic museums that have been showing and acquiring major collections of art jewelry are validating that, beyond the more specific museums like the Museum of Arts and Designs, formerly the American Craft Museum, or Racine or the Fuller Craft Museum, or a number of different institutions around the country that collect a lot of craft, or museums like the Metal Museum that focuses just on jewelry. That's an important step forward, also.   Sharon: You're certainly an articulate champion of art jewelry being not just jewelry, but a medium. So, the Fuller and the Racine are where?   Cindi: The Fuller is in Massachusetts outside of Boston. I can't remember its exact town. The Racine is in Racine, Wisconsin. The Metal Museum is in Memphis, Tennessee. Then there are a variety of other museums that have shown art jewelry through individual artists' exhibitions. I'm thinking about San Francisco Craft and Design. It used to be Craft and Design, but now I think it's called the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum. We, of course, have the MFA Boston. You have Minneapolis, LACMA, Dallas Museum of Art, all with significant jewelry collections in terms of encyclopedic institutions, and there are other institutions that have core holdings.   Sharon: You touched on this, but the question always is: is art jewelry art? It's always a debate when you're trying to educate or explain it to somebody.    Cindi: I think that's the case because art jewelry is wearable, and people aren't used to thinking that something that is wearable is also art in the way you would display it, whether that's hanging on a wall or displaying it in glass. That is a personal divide; it's something people individually have to work through.    There's no question that it's art, but I have noticed, in my experience, when people see art jewelry in the museum context, especially women, one of the first things they're thinking about is, “Would I wear this?” Once you can get people to remove that question from a first, second or third consideration, they can look and experience the work as a piece of art. It's great for them to think about whether they could wear it, because if you remove the taste question, they're really looking to see how this piece of jewelry would interact with their body, which is so central to a lot of work in art jewelry. You want that to happen.    What you want to get away from, in terms of experiencing it as a work of art, is taste. Is this my taste? Would I wear this? When we have docent tours or any kind of educational program that centers around art jewelry, this is one of the things we stress. You can, of course, like something or not like that. That's with everything in a museum and everything in the world, but try to look at a piece of art jewelry without that consideration being foremost. Then work through it as a piece of art being displayed and then, yes, think about how it will work on your body.   Sharon: That's interesting. My first thing is to look. It's jewelry. I'll go for big pieces or big statement pieces. Some of it is too much, but if you do back off, you can look at it as art. Do you think the art world looks at art jewelry as art or thinks about it becoming art, or do you think it's not going to happen?   Cindi: I think when people encounter it, every collector out there can talk about experiences when they've been at an art fair or an opening or a party where they're wearing a piece of art jewelry and it gets attention. People have questions and they want to know about it. That is an introduction to this field, and it inspires a lot of people to learn about it and collect it. Whether it's a gallery setting, or a museum, or a booth at an art fair, or an exhibition in space of any type, the key is that people are going to react to it. Whether they like it or not, whether their interest lasts beyond that initial visit, they are being presented with the fact that this is an art form. That does a lot.    I think that's, in part, why as a field we are always striving to have more opportunities for people to see art jewelry and connect with it, because that will inspire that interest. Everything has its ups and downs in terms of viewing possibilities, the market, etc., but my personal experience, again, is that people are really intrigued by it when they see it. Even if they don't explore anything further after that initial encounter, it's still lodged in their memory. You never know when that comes back and becomes a touchstone.   Sharon: That's interesting. I'd like to ask you a lot more questions. You gave me a lot of food for thought. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us, Cindi. It's been educational and illuminating, and I'll have to mull it over.   Cindi: Thank you, Sharon, I appreciate the opportunity. It's been great fun.   Sharon: Thank you.     Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.    

What you'll learn in this episode: How Cindi helped the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston secure one of the country's most important art jewelry collections  Why jewelry is a hybrid of craft and art that doesn't fit just in one category Why the art world began to question the value of craft in the 80s, and why that perspective is changing now Why museum and gallery visitors shouldn't ask themselves, “Would I wear this?” when looking at art jewelry About Cindi Strauss Cindi Strauss is the Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design and Assistant Director, Programming at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). She received her BA with honors in art history from Hamilton College and her MA in the history of decorative arts from the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons School of Design. At the MFAH, Cindi is responsible for the acquisition, research, publication, and exhibition of post-1900 decorative arts, design, and craft. Jewelry is a mainstay of Cindi's curatorial practice. In addition to regularly curating permanent collection installations that include contemporary jewelry from the museum's collection, she has organized several exhibitions that are either devoted solely to jewelry or include jewelry in them. These include: Beyond Ornament: Contemporary Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2003–2004); Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2007); Liquid Lines: Exploring the Language of Contemporary Metal (2011); and Beyond Craft: Decorative Arts from the Leatrice S. and Melvin B. Eagle Collection (2014). Cindi has authored or contributed to catalogs and journals on jewelry, craft, and design topics, and has been a frequent lecturer at museums nationwide. She also serves on the editorial advisory committee for Metalsmith magazine. Additional Resources: Museum of Fine Arts Houston Transcript: For the uninitiated, jewelry, art and craft may seem like three distinct (and perhaps, unfortunately, hierarchical) entities. But Cindi Strauss, Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, wants us to break down these barriers and appreciate the value of jewelry as an art in its own right. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about how she helped MFA Houston establish one of the largest art jewelry collections at an American museum; why jewelry artists should be proud of their studio craft roots; and why wearability shouldn't be the first consideration when looking at art jewelry. Read the episode transcript here.      Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is a two-part Jewelry Journey Podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.    Today, our guest is Cindi Strauss, the Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, where she's been responsible for a number of exhibits and has written extensively. She coauthored the recent book “Influx: American Jewelry and the Counterculture.” In addition, she's on the Board of Directors of Art Jewelry Forum. We'll hear more about her jewelry journey today. Cindi, welcome to the program.   Cindi: Thank you, Sharon. I'm delighted to be here.   Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. Did you like jewelry, or did you come to it through decorative arts? How did that work?   Cindi: Well, the story has been heard. I have told it before, about how I was introduced to art jewelry through Helen Drutt through a serendipitous meeting with her. Prior to that, we only had one piece of art jewelry in the museum's collection, a terrific Art Smith necklace from 1948. Personally, I come from a family who loves jewelry, but I have not been as much of a lover of it. I have always worn very minimal jewelry myself, so it's sort of ironic that I am the curator of this phenomenal jewelry collection, the foundation of which is the acquisition in 2002 of Helen Drutt's private collection. At that time, we acquired a little over 800 pieces, including sketchbooks and some drawings of international art jewelry dating from about 1963 to, at that point, the early 2000s. Helen continued to add to that collection up through 2006, when we were in the final preparation for the Ornamentist art exhibition and catalogue. That opened in 2007 in Houston and traveled to Washington, D.C., to Charlotte, North Carolina, and then to Tacoma, Washington. That is, from a publications point, a great point of demarcation in terms of art jewelry collections. Since then, not only has Helen continued to add pieces to the museum, but we have worked with a lot of national and local collectors, and our jewelry collection continues to grow through acquisitions and gifts.    I would say that in graduate school, I had the barest introduction to jewelry, and it was really historical jewelry as part of a larger decorative arts education, in terms of looking at styles and how they reflected themselves in historical jewelry. At the time I was in graduate school at the Cooper Hewitt, there was not a seminar on contemporary art jewelry or art jewelry in general, so my knowledge of it has really been built and continues to be built based on our collection, our commitment to it going forward, and trying to keep up with the bare minimum of what's been happening in the field. I have to say Art Jewelry Forum is an amazing way for me to do that through their website, through the articles, through the artist awards, through the artist maker pages. It's a very easy snapshot of what's happening in the field, and then I can take that research and interest into other directions.   Sharon: I can't imagine being an aficionado, whether it's to study or just being a jewelry lover, and not being involved in Art Jewelry Forum. There's no other place like it.    Cindi: There isn't. Honestly, nine times out of 10, if I am interested in learning more about an artist and I plug in the artist's name in Google, the first search that comes up is always Art Jewelry Forum. It's either an interview or an article or something. For me, it has always been a one-stop initial research location.   Sharon: How did you come to study decorative arts? How did you become a professional in the area? Was that something you had always wanted to do? What was your training?   Cindi: It really happened, I would say, serendipitously. I grew up in a family where my father was in the design field, particularly in textiles. My parents' preferred style was that of Scandinavia and Italian modern. I grew up in a contemporary house, so there was a certain amount of osmosis with this field. I grew up in Connecticut, which is more oriented towards colonial architecture and traditional interiors, and I knew our house was different and it kind of stuck out. I remember asking my parents when I was young why our house didn't look like everybody else's, and their answer was very simple: because this is what we like, and this is why we like it.   I went off to college and thought I was going to be an English major. I took an intro to art history survey and found I loved it, but it wasn't until my senior year in college that a survey of the history of decorative arts was offered, and that completely ignited my fire. As much as I loved art history, I wanted to be able to touch paintings, which I can't do. I was interested in the tactile qualities of art and texture and being able to feel and understand value. This introduction to the history of decorative arts was my gateway. That ignited a passion not only for the decorative arts, but when I was going to the museums and such during that time, I started to pay attention to decorative arts galleries more than I had in my museum billing previously. I thought, “This is what I want to do; this is where I want to be. I want to be in a museum and I want to be doing decorative arts.”   My first year out of college, I had an academic year fellowship at the Met. It was in a subset of the registrar's office called the cataloguing department, and that gave me a bird's eye, in-depth view of what was happening at the Met. At that time, I knew I was going to have go to graduate school, and I learned about Cooper Hewitt's program in the history of decorative arts. At that point, I chose Cooper Hewitt. There was no graduate center yet, and I knew I didn't want to do early American decorative arts. I wanted to have a broader art education, so I went to Cooper Hewitt. Interestingly, my thesis and a large chunk of my classes were on 18th-century European art, particularly porcelain, and I thought I would spend my career there because that's where all the research was happening. With the exception of design museums or modern art museums like MOMA, a lot of the big, encyclopedic institutions were not really paying attention to decorative arts beyond the Arts and Crafts movement. But I took as many classes as I could in 20th-century design and took decorative arts because that was what my personal passion was.   I got lucky, because my first position after graduate school was curatorial assistant here in Houston. I was split between two departments, the decorative arts department and our not-yet-opened house museum, Rienzi. It was the perfect job for me because Rienzi was all about the 18th century, whereas the decorative arts department was just starting to move past the Arts and Crafts movement into modern and contemporary. Ultimately, I was able to determine the pathway for that and create a separate department, and I made my way out of the 18th century to focus completely on the 20th and 21st centuries. So, it was a pathway of following my heart and my curiosity within this larger field.   Sharon: What were your thoughts when you were presented with this 800+ piece collection by Helen Drutt and they said, “O.K., put this exhibit together”?   Cindi: First of all, it was completely daunting. Anyone who knows Helen knows her knowledge is so vast, and she is so generous with it, but at the beginning, it's all brand new. So, it's rather intimidating, and you're doing so much looking and listening. In my initial conversations with Helen about the possibility of this acquisition, it was focused on the “Jewelry of Our Time” catalogue that she had cowritten, which featured a lot of the collection. There was a lot of study of that, trying to get myself up to speed to even make the presentations for the acquisition to not only my director, but our trustees.    It's funny; I have my initial notebooks from my first visit to Philadelphia with Helen, where I spent a number of days just sitting next to her as she held up different pieces, talked about different people, gave insight. Because I didn't know anything about the field—all the artists' names are spelled phonetically—there are a lot of notes to myself saying, “What does this really mean?” or a question mark with “follow up” or something like that, and I was drawing. I think I had a cell phone, but there was no cell phone camera. I didn't have an iPhone or iPad. I don't even know if they existed in 2002, but I would draw little pictures next to something she was talking about. Anyone who knows me knows I am quite possibly the world's worst draftsperson, so the pictures are hilarious. But I go back to those notebooks periodically, and you can see how I am intent on wrapping my head around this and trying to understand which countries, who were the major players, where things had gone.   We built a library at the museum with Helen's help. She seeded our library intending to send books. We were ordering catalogues nonstop, and I spent the better part of four years immersing myself in art jewelry and talking to artists. At that point, it was all done through these forms we would mail to artists. I tried to meet artists, and Helen's archives with all the correspondence were an incredible resource. There were interviews with artists and things like that. I would travel to the American Craft Council to see their incredible library and artist archive. I would do all of this plus travel to meet artists. I did a number of trips to Europe and across the U.S., trying to get my head around this field as seen through Helen's collection. The collection represents not only her eye and experiences and viewpoint, but truly the birth and development of the field over decades, not just in America, but globally as well.   Sharon: What's her connection to Houston? How is it she came to your museum?   Cindi: She didn't have any real connection to Houston. At the time, her son, Matthew, was the Chief Curator of the Manil Collection, which is a terrific, incredible museum here in Houston. She also had a very close and longstanding friendship with our then-photography curator, Anne Tucker. They met in a cute way over a slide table at Moore College of Art in the 70s, when they were both teaching there.    We have a festival every other year in Houston called FotoFest. It's one of the U.S.'s largest photography festivals, and all the institutions do exhibitions for FotoFest and their popup shows and galleries. The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft was only a year old at that point, but through connections, they met Helen. She curated a small show of photo-based, image-based jewelry for FotoFest, so of course she came down, and that's where I met her.    I met her at the opening. We had coffee separately during her visit. I was really ramping up our craft collection in terms of acquisitions and representation. As I said, we only had this one piece of art jewelry. I knew enough about what I didn't know to say to Helen at the time, “This is a field I'm interested in starting to acquire works from. Would you guide me?” She pointed me towards the “Jewelry of Our Time” catalogue and said, “Well, you know I have a collection.” I, of course, said, “Well, yes, it's famous, and it's in Philadelphia. It's so lucky they're going to get it.” She said, “Not necessarily. Nothing's been done. There's nothing in writing.” I seized on that and said, “Well, will you provide me with more information, and may I speak to my director about this?” She said, “Sure.”    It was, at the time, sort of a lark. I thought, “I don't know whether this will happen,” because it was not a field we were familiar with and certainly my director, Peter Marzio, was not familiar with it. I showed him the book. I talked to him with my little knowledge. He was intrigued, because he saw in it what he referred to as a “visual index” of modern and contemporary art in small scale. He saw all the connections and the creativity, and he said, “I'd like to learn more.” I arranged for him to go to Philadelphia, where he spent half a day with Helen and they talked and looked at pieces. He came back and said to me, “I want to figure this out. I want to do this,” and the rest is history.   Sharon: Wow! It's funny; when you were saying you were spelling things phonetically, I thought of Gijs Bakker. That's the name that came to mind. For people listening, it's G-i-l-s-b—   Cindi: G-i-j-s B-a-k-k-er. Gijs is one of the most important Dutch jewelry artists. He, along with his late wife, Emmy van Leersum, completely turned the idea of art jewelry on its head in the 60s. He and a number of other Dutch artists in the 60s and 70s revolutionized the field. Helen was such a great supporter, and he's one of her dearest friends. We have something like 34 or 35 of his pieces in the collection, not just from Helen, but from a couple of others that we've added along the way. I think outside of the Netherlands, we have the largest collection of Gijs' work.   Sharon: Wow! My first Art Jewelry Forum trip was to Amsterdam. I had just come to art jewelry myself, and his studio and his house were the first stop. When I think about it now, I think, “Oh, my god!” I had no idea. At the time, I didn't know which way was up when it came to art jewelry.   Cindi: I think that is a lot of people's first experience. It's visually compelling, and then you start to learn more. Quite often, you realize after the fact you met one of these super-important people, or you were in their studio or what have you.    Sharon: Yeah, it really is. I'm backing up a little. When you were studying, were there museums studies? Did you expect to be working in a museum or to be a curator? Was that part of your career field?    Cindi: Yeah, I always wanted to work in a museum, and I wanted to work in a curatorial capacity. The Cooper Hewitt's program at that time was geared towards museum curatorial careers. Also, a lot of people went into education. It was not geared towards working in the commercial sector. There were a handful of people who might have gone to an auction house or to a gallery, but it was focused on developing museum curators. That was something I knew I wanted and was really important to me in terms of being at the Cooper Hewitt. The program is embedded in the museum physically and has a lot of faculty from the museum and also, during my time, a lot of faculty from the Met, from the Brooklyn Museum. We had people teaching from MFA Boston, from Winterthur.    It was very much a program equally based on not only research and history and study, but on connoisseurship. Connoisseurship is essential to being a museum curator. You need to be able to delineate and understand the differences between different objects made by the same designer as well as within any larger aspect of the field. Cooper Hewitt was very much geared towards that, which was perfect for me. Because we were in the museum and we had faculty from other New York area museums, it was also possible to have internships with prominent curators from the various museums, again, moving you through this curatorial path.    The trick is always getting a job, and for me that was a lot of luck, I think. When I was in my second year, my last year of graduate school, I was working as an intern for one of the premier curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, particularly in late 19th-century ceramics and glass but also furniture. Her co-curator on an upcoming exhibition was my future boss at Houston. There was a job opening. Katherine Howe sent a fax, at that time, of the job description, and she handed it to me and said, “I know you still have a semester to go, but here, take a look at it.” I thought, “Well, I need to get a résumé in order. I need to start thinking about this.” I applied not thinking anything other than this is good exercise, and it obviously worked out for me.    I think in my graduating class from Cooper Hewitt—I think there were about 15 of us—there were only three of us who actually got museum jobs. A lot of it is timing because positions come open so rarely. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one from my graduating class left in a museum. It's not for everybody, and there aren't always jobs, but it was all I ever wanted to do. I also only wanted to work in a big institution, so Houston fit the bill for me. I love doing what I do within an encyclopedic institution, being able to contextualize, in this case, art jewelry, whether it's historical works of art, the idea of adornment, showing it within a particular geographical context. We exhibit the jewelry not only on its own and with other contemporary craft and design, but we exhibit it next to painting, sculpture, photography, works on paper. We embed it, and that is something my colleagues are very much used to and see it as being a vital art form.   Sharon: This is a two-part Jewelry Journey podcast. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it comes out later this week.

Imagine launching a membership based on your passion…  It's the dream, right? But what if you've built your business delivering classes in-person and are faced with the challenge of finding an online solution that will deliver the same value? And you need to do this in the midst of a global pandemic… That's exactly what https://lucywalkerjewellery.com/ (Lucy Walker) from https://lucywalkerjewellery.com/membership-plans/ (The Metalsmith Academy) did… And her story is awesome!  She's only a year into her membership and has thousands of members… And while she's been hugely successful as a membership owner, the past year hasn't passed by without its challenges…  In this episode Lucy joins us to share her journey so far…  Listen to hear about:   How the pandemic forced Lucy to put her entire business online and make the transition from offering courses to launching her membership.  How The Metalsmith Academy launched with over 3,000 members in total, with 1,300 of them opting for the annual plan.  The reasons behind changing her enrollment model from closed to open.  How Lucy uses Instagram and YouTube to drive people into her membership funnel. Her approach to fostering a positive community and driving engagement.   Key Quotes: “We try and get people straight into the forums. As soon as they join, the first thing we say on email is ‘Hey, go and say hi in the forums, I'll be there waiting for you. Come and introduce yourself”  “With jewellery, it's such a practical skill. When we were teaching in-person classes you could just have a vague outline and show people then be there to guide them through their problems. With online classes, the clearer you make them, the less work you have to do in the background, so being online has made me be a lot clearer in my teaching.” “As a team we can often pack up and head off to a tropical island to work and that's absolutely amazing.”  “I wish I'd started building an audience earlier. I wish we'd started concentrating on Instagram when I first started making jewellery, rather than doing it when I started the business because I had to.” 

Pam Robinson is a metalsmith, goldsmith, jewelry maker and designer based out of Chicago, IL. She is the owner of Garnet Studios and is the Education Director for national non-profit The Furniture Society. In this episode we sit down to hear Pam's background and journey as a maker and artisan, and how she balances the duties of being an education director, business and studio owner, and artist. You can find Pam on Instagram and Garnet Studios. You can see more of Pam's work and information on her website.

What you'll learn in this episode: The history of Metalsmith magazine, and why it maintains its name even as its scope has expanded beyond metals How SNAG has made efforts to diversify the voices in Metalsmith and open the organization to new members What type of content Adriane looks for as an editor, and how you can pitch ideas to her What changes need to be made in the jewelry industry to make it more equitable Why being a curator and being an editor aren't so different About Adriane Dalton Adriane Dalton is an artist, writer, and educator based in Philadelphia, PA. She is the editor of Metalsmith, the magazine published by the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG). She was formerly the Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) in Logan, Utah, where she co-curated “ARTsySTEM: The Changing Climate of the Arts and Sciences” and taught History of American Studio Craft, among many other curatorial and educational projects.  She holds an MA in the history of decorative arts and design from Parsons The New School for Design (2014), and a BFA in craft and material studies from the University of the Arts (2004). Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Contemporary Craft (Pittsburgh, PA), The Wayne Art Center (Wayne, PA), Snyderman-Works Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), A CASA Museu de Object Brasileiro (Sao Paulo, Brazil), the Metal Museum (Memphis, TN), and Space 1026 (Philadelphia, PA). Additional Resources: SNAG Website Adriane's Instagram Photos: Recent Metal Smith Covers Transcript: Adriane Dalton took a meandering path to become editor of Metalsmith, the Society of North American Goldsmith's (SNAG) quarterly magazine, but her background as a maker, her work as a curator, and her education in the history of craft has only helped her hone her editorial skills. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the overlaps between making, curating and editing; what she looks for when selecting work for the magazine; and why it's important we not just talk about objects and the people who make them, but the conditions in which people make them. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: What kinds of changes do you think? I don't know, galleries representing more Black jewelers and jewelers of color? What kinds of changes do you mean? Talking about them in classes? Adriane: For that particular issue, that essay by Valena Robinson Glass and the essay by Leslie Boyd touch on some of the possibilities for how to address those things. I would encourage anyone who's listening who hasn't read that issue or isn't familiar with it to go pick it up off your bookshelf or go purchase it from SNAG. There are a lot of ways you can be reflective. Some of it is as simple as trying to understand if you have a space where there are no Black, indigenous, or people of color in that space, whether you're a galleries or an educator, what are the barriers to access for people, whether they're economic or graphic? There are a lot of different things. I don't know that I can say there are one-size-fits all solutions to these things, but I think it's a matter of being reflective. Sharon: I know you're the editor of the publication; you're not speaking for SNAG itself, but what do you see SNAG doing to lower barriers? Adriane: I think some of the things SNAG has done have been done to create, for example—for our virtual conference, there were needs-based scholarships for folks to attend the conference if they had an economic barrier, which is one way SNAG has dealt with that. Because of us having canceled our conference last year, there's been a lot of upheaval. We're trying to get through and recover from the financial burden of having to cancel an annual conference, as many organizations have this past year.  One of the other things that has been done—and this started pre-pandemic—is changing how we define what it means to be a student. In the past, that was implied to mean a student of a four-year jewelry program. As most folks have probably noticed, there are fewer and fewer jewelry and metals programs in higher education in the U.S. than ever. So many programs have closed, and there have been a lot of community programs which have popped up, such as the Baltimore Jewelry Center, Smith Shop in Detroit, Brooks Metalworks, plus others. Then, of course, there are places like We Wield the Hammer and the Crucible in San Francisco. We're trying to include anyone who's taking classes in a community setting in this definition of student, offering lower rates for registrations for students, lower rates for student memberships and things like that. SNAG's membership cost at this point is $99 annually, which I believe is less than it used to be. I feel like it used to be higher than that.  Sharon: I don't remember. I get my renewal notice and I know I want to remain a member. Will there be a regular conference this year or next spring, do you think? Although who knows with the Delta variant.  Adriane: Right. There are plans for an in-person conference to happen in the spring of 2022 as it would normally, around Labor Day. I'm not involved in the conference planning, so I don't know exactly what the plan is at this point, but I think there are some other things that SNAG has planned in the meantime. We have other virtual programming.  We're going to be having a symposium in the fall in October. I believe it's October 22-23. This is part of what will be an annual program that happens every fall in addition to the conference, and it will be virtual. I believe the title of that symposium program is “Tides and Waves.” Each year, we'll have a different geographical focus throughout the world. I believe that is the focus for this coming symposium, which is happening this fall. I think it will have been announced by the time this comes up. Sharon: This fall being 2021? Adriane: Yeah, this fall being 2021. I think the geographical focus for this symposium is Eastern Asia. Sharon: Oh, wow, that will be interesting. I'm not a maker, and when I go to the conferences, I'm more focused on what people are showing, what's different. I'm trying to remember the issues you're talking about. It doesn't seem like there have been many—maybe they haven't been of much interest to me, but I haven't heard these issues being discussed at the conferences as much as how you form a gold something, or whatever. I don't know.  Adriane: You mean as far as conference sessions? Sharon: Sessions, yeah. Adriane: The last conference I attended was in Chicago. No, that's not true; I attended our virtual conference, but when you're working and the conference is happening and you're trying to zip in and out of things and pay attention to everything, it's all kind of a blur for me at this point, honestly. I think the most recent virtual conference dealt a little bit more with some of the things I was mentioning. For example, there was a panel that dealt with people who were makers or involved in the field in some way, but who also have a caretaking role, whether that's mothering or something that. That also speaks to what I was mentioning before, thinking about not just what we make, but the conditions in which we make. That is a huge topic that hasn't fully been addressed. How can you go to a residency and take a month or longer to do that when you have a small child—or not even a small child, a teenager—and do all of these things when you have some other person you have to care for? And of course, that disproportionately affects women in the field. I think one of the things that is great about an in-person conference but is much more difficult to have happen organically in a virtual setting, even now when we are accustomed to attending events virtually—and I love it; it's great because I can be in San Francisco; I can be in New York; I can be in London, but I don't have to leave my house. I just have to be awake at whatever time zone the event is happening in. But something that doesn't happen at these things is the organic conversations you have in small groups at dinner or over drinks. For me as the editor, those are the conversations I'm really looking for. What are people talking about that we aren't talking about more broadly, and how can we make space for that and bring that in? Sharon: That's an interesting question. Yes, you do hear that as you're having coffee with somebody or with a group. What's on your plate that you've heard? Maybe it's harder to hear that virtually, but something that you thought, “Oh, I want to investigate that more,” or “We need to do something about that, an article.” Adriane: Yeah, one very straightforward example is that during last year's virtual New York City Jewelry Week, I spent the entire week, morning to night for seven days straight, glued to my computer. I was picking my laptop up and taking it into my kitchen when I made dinner. By the end of the week, I didn't want to look at a screen again, but of course I had to. One of the presentations during New York City Jewelry Week last year was by Sebastian Grant— Sharon: He is? Adriane: Sebastian is a jewelry historian and teaches at Parsons - Cooper Hewitt. His presentation, which I believe was in concert with The Jewelry Library, was on looking at the history of Black jewelry artists from mid-century forward and trying to identify these makers and talk about their work and their stories that hadn't been shared or acknowledged. In a lot of publications, there hasn't been comprehensive publishing around some of these artists. After seeing his presentation, I reached out to him and asked if he would be interested in taking some of that research and sharing it in Metalsmith in a series of articles. So far, we've published two articles by Sebastian. That's a very direct example of being engaged in the field in a virtual setting, hearing conversations that are going on—it was a presentation, but there was also a Q&A afterwards—and knowing this is something that needs to be given more space.  Sharon: It must be great to be in a position where you can say, “This needs to be addressed further” and do something about it, to literally create. I know you have people you consult with on that, but still, that's very interesting. What other areas do you have in mind that are churning right now? Adriane: It's hard to say. I can talk a little bit about the examples of things that have happened over the recent volume that fit these criteria. Looking forward, it's a little harder because I'm just finishing up Volume 41—or getting ready to finish it up—and then Volume 42 will be starting. There's a lot of planning, a lot of question marks and things that are penciled in that I'm hoping will be written in in pen shortly.  One of the examples that directly came out of attending the conference in Chicago, aside from that conversation I mentioned with Lauren Eckert which led to the New Voices Competition, was at—I forget what it was called—but basically, it was the exhibition room where everyone has their small pop-up exhibitions. There was an exhibition that was curated by Mary Raivel and Mary Fissell, who are both based in Baltimore and involved with the Baltimore Center. Their exhibition was called “Coming of Age,” and they were specifically interested in artists who had come to jewelry making or metalsmithing as a second career after having some other career first. I was really interested in that, because there's the idea of the emerging artist as being someone who's young and just out of school, just out of undergrad or just out of grad school. I think it's a limiting way to think about where people are at in their creative process. I invited them to write about that exhibition, turn it into an article and talk about the interviews they did with the artists who applied to the show. We ran that in Volume 40, so it was the second issue of Volume 40 of Metalsmith. Sharon: That's a really interesting subject. It's so true; there are so many people who have come to jewelry making, whether it's in metal or in plastic or whatever, after a career doing something else, when they said, “Hey, I'm done with this and I really want to do what I want do.” I know Art Jewelry Forum, when they started—I don't know exactly where it ended up, but I know there was discussion in terms of age. Originally some of the grants being submitted had to do with age, and that really doesn't tell you anything. Adriane: Right. That actually came up in that article. It's been a while since I read it, so it's not fresh in my mind, but I believe they interviewed someone from Art Jewelry Forum—maybe it was Yvonne—and they brought this up and talk about that. In the article, they talk about how people fall into this gap where they're an age on paper where it seems like they should be mid-career artists, but they truly are emerging artists; it just may not seem that way if you know their age. I think it's interesting, and the more we try to put—and this is true of all sorts of things—rigid parameters on something, I think we limit ourselves in whom we invite to participate in the field or be in these spaces with us. It leaves people out. Not everyone can graduate from high school and go straight into college and start a career as a bench jeweler or a production jeweler or conceptual artist. There are a lot of different factors that contribute to where a person is in their career and the work they're making. Sharon: Yeah, that as well. What's a student today? It's an avocation. It may become their vocation eventually, but if they take a class at a community—I took a class at a jewelry school, and that's all the metalsmithing I've done. I was thinking about how you, being a maker, how does that affect—do you think you could do your job as well if you weren't a maker? Adriane: I don't think I could do my job as well if I were not a maker who had a grounding in the processes and traditions of metalsmithing. As I was saying earlier, the field and the materiality of the field has shifted a lot. My undergraduate study in learning the basics of jewelry and metalsmithing is helpful for me as I'm looking at the way authors are writing about artists' work. Not everyone who writes for the magazine is a maker or a jeweler, so there are some times when a term might come up, or someone might interpret a component of an object in a certain way. I, as someone who is a maker, and our readers often could look at that and say, “Well, I don't think that's quite right.” I then have the knowledge to write a note or an edit and say, “Hey, I think you might have this wrong. I think it's vermeil and not actually gold.” I don't think I would have that ability if I didn't have a background as a maker. Sharon: That's interesting. How do you find the journalism aspect? To me, what you're doing—it's both the combination of being a maker or jeweler and having the crafts background, but the journalism, not everybody could do that. Adriane: I don't think about it in that way necessarily. Having a curatorial background, I think about the magazine more curatorially, I would say. Maybe there's some overlap with the way someone with a journalism background would think about it, but because that is not my background and not my training, I don't know. I think about what I'm doing as the editor as interpretative, in the way that if you are a curator and you've done research and you're presenting a selection of artworks to the public, you have to contextualize them in some way. You have to make sure that the way that you've put things together, people can come into that space, whether it's in a print publication or in a gallery space, and hopefully they can come away with the things that are apparent and the subtleties at the same time. That's what I try to capture when I write my letter from the editor for every issue, which, as you alluded to earlier, sounds like a difficult task and it certainly is. Even though I have done a lot of writing, I'm always fussing with it and fussing with it and fussing with it up to the last minute. I want to make sure that when people read it, they get something out of it that isn't just, “Here's what's in this issue.” Sharon: That's interesting. Being an editor has so many similarities with being a curator. You're culling through things and what goes with what and setting the context, which is what you definitely do in the note from the editor, and I'll be thinking about them a little differently as I read more. I already look at them and think, “Oh, it's so hard to express yourself.” You do a very good job, but they're very weighty things you're talking about. It's not just, “Oh, we have pretty pieces of jewelry in this issue.” Adriane: Right. If that were the case, that would probably be all I had to say about it.  Sharon: That's true; moving from here on to Vogue. Adriane: I don't know about that. Sharon: Adriane, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. You've given us a lot to think about. I didn't enter this conversation realizing it would be so thought-provoking. Thank you. It's greatly, greatly appreciated. Adriane: That's wonderful; thank you, and thank you for having me. This has been a fantastic conversation. Sharon: So glad to have you. We will have images posted on the website. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.  

What you'll learn in this episode: The history of Metalsmith magazine, and why it maintains its name even as its scope has expanded beyond metals How SNAG has made efforts to diversify the voices in Metalsmith and open the organization to new members What type of content Adriane looks for as an editor, and how you can pitch ideas to her What changes need to be made in the jewelry industry to make it more equitable Why being a curator and being an editor aren't so different About Adriane Dalton Adriane Dalton is an artist, writer, and educator based in Philadelphia, PA. She is the editor of Metalsmith, the magazine published by the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG). She was formerly the Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) in Logan, Utah, where she co-curated “ARTsySTEM: The Changing Climate of the Arts and Sciences” and taught History of American Studio Craft, among many other curatorial and educational projects.  She holds an MA in the history of decorative arts and design from Parsons The New School for Design (2014), and a BFA in craft and material studies from the University of the Arts (2004). Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Contemporary Craft (Pittsburgh, PA), The Wayne Art Center (Wayne, PA), Snyderman-Works Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), A CASA Museu de Object Brasileiro (Sao Paulo, Brazil), the Metal Museum (Memphis, TN), and Space 1026 (Philadelphia, PA). Additional Resources: SNAG Website Adriane's Instagram Photos: Recent Metal Smith Covers Transcript: Adriane Dalton took a meandering path to become editor of Metalsmith, the Society of North American Goldsmith's (SNAG) quarterly magazine, but her background as a maker, her work as a curator, and her education in the history of craft has only helped her hone her editorial skills. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the overlaps between making, curating and editing; what she looks for when selecting work for the magazine; and why it's important we not just talk about objects and the people who make them, but the conditions in which people make them. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guest is Adriane Dalton, editor of Metalsmith Magazine published by SNAG, the Society of North American Goldsmiths. The publication is designed to keep makers, jewelers and other artists in the field informed about important issues and people in their creative field. Adriane, welcome to the program. Adriane: Hi, it's wonderful to be here. Sharon: So glad to have you. I'm really looking forward to hearing all about this. I've been reading the magazine for so long. Tell us about your own jewelry journey. Were you a maker? How did you get into this? Did you come to it through journalism or the arts? Adriane: I came to it through the arts. I do not have a journalism background. I actually have a BFA in craft and material studies from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, which is where I now live again after being in a lot of other places over the years. That craft and material studies program was my first introduction to jewelry making and to the contemporary jewelry field as we know it and as represented by SNAG and Metalsmith. Prior to that, I think my conception of jewelry was limited to the standard things you would see in the mall. That program was my gateway to the field. Sharon: Is that what you wanted to do when you came to study crafts and material arts? Did you think you'd be doing jewelry? Were you going to do fine art? Adriane: When I started undergrad, I had intended to be a photography major or potentially a glassblower. You have this first, foundational year of art school where you get to try different things out, and then you have to decide what your major is. I decided that in order to try to blow glass and work with my hands, I would need to be in the glass department. You couldn't major in glass at the time, so you had to pick a different focus area and then you could take classes in the glass department. So, I became a jewelry major sort of incidentally. I've always enjoyed working with my hands and making physical objects, so it ended up being a good fit for me. While I was there, I studied with Sharon Church, Rod McCormick and Lola Brooks, who were all teaching in the program at the time. That was my introduction to jewelry as an art form, not just as a piece of adornment. Sharon: So, you weren't third grade thinking, “I want to make jewelry.” Adriane: No. Sharon: When you graduated, were you making? How did it come about that you're now editing a publication? Adriane: It's been a meandering path, honestly. I graduated with my BFA with a focus in jewelry and metals. I was interested in enameling, and I did a lot of enamel work. When I finished undergrad, I had a studio and I worked on some small production lines. I worked on one-of-a-kind work, but I also needed to have a job to support myself beyond that, and I found out very quickly that I didn't like making production work. It wasn't what I wanted to do to support myself or express myself creatively. For about eight years, I worked in an office job and had a studio space. I was involved in some community arts organizations here in Philadelphia and maintained my own creative practice during that time.  It was almost 10 years after I had graduated from undergrad that I decided to go to grad school. I was interested in studying the field of craft more broadly, not just jewelry itself, so I enrolled in the joint program between Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York and Parsons. At the time, it was called History of Decorative Arts and Design. I believe the program is now History of Design and Curatorial Studies. I went into the program hoping to have a more formalized and research-based approach to thinking about craft. Sharon: Wow! That must have been exciting to be in New York and studying at such premier schools. Were you going to do research? Did you want to go into museums? What did you think you might want to do? Adriane: I was 30 at the time when I started grad school, and I had enough time after undergrad to figure out some of the things I didn't want to do. I considered going and receiving an MFA. I toyed with that idea a bit, and I decided I wanted to try to have a career that would allow me to use my creative mind in the work, but that would hopefully feed into my creative practice in some way while also supporting me. I had a curatorial focus when I was in grad school, and I had some fellowships in the Cooper Hewitt Product Design and Decorative Arts Department under Sarah Coffin when she was still curator there; I think she's since retired. I also was the jewelry intern under Alice Newman at the Museum of Arts and Design while I was in grad school. Those two experiences opened up possibilities for me to engage with the field in a way I hadn't prior to grad school. Sharon: Wow! Some really important people that were mentors or teachers. How did it come about that you're now at Metalsmith Magazine? Adriane: After grad school, I actually moved to Utah from New York, to a small town in northern Utah where I was the assistant curator of an art museum there, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, which at the time had some exhibitions that were craft-centric. I came on to help with some of that. They have a fantastic ceramics collection. Ceramics is not my focus area, but having a broad generalization in craft, I can sort of move between materials. So, I was in Utah for a few years working as a curator. Then I moved back to the East Coast, to Richmond. I was working at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in their education department doing programming.  The way I came to be the editor of Metalsmith was a fluke in a lot of ways. I had applied for a different position at SNAG at the time that was educationally focused. I had a couple of interviews, got along really well with the executive director at the time, Gwynne Rukenbrod Smith. A few months later, she reached out to me and said, “Hey, our editor, Emily Zilber, is leaving, and I need someone to come in on an interim basis and keep things going until we figure out what we are going to do with the position and the magazine. Is this something you'd be interested in and capable of?” I said, “Yes, sure.” I came on thinking it would be potentially a six-month arrangement and then I would go on doing museum education, which is what I was doing. It ended up working out and I was invited to stay on, and so here I am. Sharon: Wow! Tell us about Metalsmith and what you want to do with it, what its purpose is, that sort of thing. Adriane: Sure. Metalsmith is one program area of SNAG. For folks who are listening who may not be familiar with SNAG, SNAG is the Society of North American Goldsmiths. It's a 50-year-old—well, I think it's 51 years old now—organization that's an international member-based organization. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our member base is predominantly a variety of metalsmiths, jewelers, other folks who maybe don't consider themselves jewelers but use the body as a flight for expression, production studio jewelry artists, teachers, historians, curators, collectors, gallerists and writers. Our member focus is North America, but we do have members and subscribers all over the world. Metalsmith fits into SNAG in the sense that as a program area, it helps SNAG fulfill part of its mission statement, which is to advance the field of jewelry and metalsmithing and to inspire creativity, encourage education and foster community. Before it was Metalsmith, SNAG had three other publications. It started as a newsletter in the early days, and then it became Gold Dust. Then it was, I think, Goldsmith's Journal. Metalsmith was established in 1980. So, we are now in our 41st year of publication. Sharon: Did it become Metalsmith because—I'm a member of SNAG and I really like it, but I've only met maybe one goldsmith. Is that what happened there, going from Gold Dust to Metalsmith? Adriane: I think so. I'm not privy to all the early decisions of how the magazine was established and run, but I think choosing Metalsmith was to be more inclusive of the field at that time. Now, of course, one of the critiques I hear sometimes from members and other folks in the field is that Metalsmith doesn't always have that much metal in it. Sharon: That's true, yes. Adriane: That is true. That is, I think, indicative of the shifts in interdisciplinarity and shifts in thinking about materials that are appropriate for these forms that have happened over the past 20 or 30 years in the field. There have been times when people have said, “Well, they should change the name to something else,” but it still fits in a lot of ways. The word “smith” in and of itself points to the action that is involved. For me and how I think about the magazine and the work that's in the magazine, it doesn't necessarily matter what the material is; it's more about the approach and the context in which the maker is putting it out into the world. Sharon: How are you choosing the subjects? There are so many different areas now. I think of plastics; I think of wood; I think about all different kinds of crafts and jewelry. How do you choose the issues and writers you put in the publication? Adriane: I take pictures and proposals. Anyone listening to this podcast, anyone out there can send me an email or get in touch with me to propose any idea they have for an article or an artist they want to cover, things like that. It's a combination of taking proposals from people who reach out to me and me seeking people out who I'm interested in their work or interested in their writing, or me finding someone who I think would be good to write about a particular artist's work. It depends, and it's a mishmash of those things. A misconception I try to dispel any chance I get, and will do so now, is that I have a glut of proposals coming in. Really, a lot of the time I don't, particularly in the past 18 months. During the pandemic, people's focus has been in other directions, as it should be, but it's hard to keep things going if I have to do all the outreach and it's not going in both directions like it should. Sharon: I'm surprised; with everybody at home during lockdown, it seems like it would have been the perfect time for people to be writing or pitching or proposing or thinking about it at least. Adriane: Yeah, it is a combination of things. I do have people who reach out to me who I may or may not be familiar with. I'm really interested in having voices in the magazine that are new to the field or are in the process of establishing themselves as a thinker in the field. One of the ways we have done that in the past two years was through a writing competition that we hosted during our 40th volume, which was the previous volume to the one that's being published now. That was proposed to me by an artist and author, Lauren Eckert, who approached me at SNAG's conference in Chicago, the last in-person conference we held. She said, “What do you think about having a writing contest to get new voices into the magazine?” and I said, “Oh, I think that that's a great idea. Would you want to help me get that together?” She volunteered, and I invited Lauren to join the publication's advisory committee, which is a sounding board and feedback board for the magazine.  We ran the competition and had two awardees, and we published their writing in this most recent volume. In issue 41, we had Jessica Todd's article “Restrung: Contemporary North American Beadsmiths.” In issue 42, we had “Difficult Adornments: Recontextualizing Creative Adornment Through Display” which was by Rebecca Schena. Jessica was the New Voices award winner and Rebecca was the runner up, but we couldn't narrow it down to just one because there were so many great submissions. It was very hard to pick them.  Sharon: In terms of issues, what issues are really close to you, important to you? What issues do you see in the field? It's a few months old now, but I was looking at one of the publications about Black jewelers and inequality in the field, and I thought, “Well, that's not a namby-pamby issue; it's right out there and you're not afraid to discuss those kinds of things.” Adriane: Yeah, something that is important to me and has become extremely necessary as the world has shifted so much in the past 18 months is to not just create content in a vacuum, but to have the work and the voices in the magazine truly be representative of what is going on in the field. Some of that includes acknowledging ways the field of jewelry and metalsmithing replicates other systemic racist structures that exist in American society. To speak to the bigger picture for how I think about the content of the magazine—and this also predates the pandemic, but the pandemic has made me more firm in this—is that it's important to not just talk about objects and the people who make them, but to talk about the conditions in which people make them. That is especially relevant now that the world has been the way it has been for the past 18 months and we are all more acutely aware of a lot of things than perhaps previously. Sharon: That's a good point, in terms of picking up a publication or going online and saying, “What are the pretty pictures?” or “What are the creative objects?” You also mentioned in one of your notes from the editor—it must be a challenge to come with that every month, in terms of pithy subjects—you wrote that for some, the process of growth is discomfort. How does that manifest itself? Do you see it manifesting in SNAG's members, for example? Adriane: I don't know if I can speak to how it manifests for our members. I will say SNAG has a diverse membership. When I'm making the magazine, I'm making it not only for SNAG's membership, but we also have some people who subscribe but aren't SNAG members, and the magazine is on newsstands. So, I'm trying to think broadly whenever possible. As far as that particular letter from the editor, some of the content in that issue—which includes that essay by Rebecca Schena that I mentioned before—but it also includes the piece you alluded to, which is by Valena Robinson Grass, “Moving Beyond Acknowledgment: Systemic Barriers for Black American Metalsmiths.” There's another article in there by Leslie Boyd about how white educators can be more attentive to the ways their students are showing up in the structure of academia. As I'm talking, I'm getting further and further away from answering your question, but— Sharon: No, I don't get that impression. Adriane: I think that, much like a lot of other things that have happened in the past 18 months, there needs to be some amount of reflection and reckoning in parts of the jewelry field that have been predominantly white spaces and reflecting upon why that is, and thinking about how you can claim to value diversity and inclusivity and equity. You can say those things and you can mean them, but unless you're willing to do the reflection and make some changes, then it's meaningless; it's empty. We will have images posted on the website. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.

Guylaine Cyr is fascinated by shiny things and the infinite possibilities of metals. She started her education with a certificate in Foundation Visual Arts at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design (NBCCD) in Fredericton in 1998. She was attracted to larger scale work but decided to pursue jewellery and small objects design at Kootenay ... The post The Intersection of Art & Industry with Metalsmith Guylaine Cyr appeared first on thirdspacegallery.ca.

Andrea is a Mexican-American artist based in Texas. She obtained her BFA in Studio Arts from the University of Texas and has received multiple awards, including residencies at Ox Bow School of Art and Penland School of Crafts. She has worked and exhibited internationally and currently teaches metalsmithing in several institutions in Texas. With metalsmithing she creates sculptural pieces as well as knives. She is also pursuing a passion in scientific glass blowing. You can follow along with Andrea on Instagram and her Website.

What you'll learn in this episode: The characteristics that define contemporary American jewelry What narrative art jewelry is, and why it was so prevalent in the 1960s and 70s What defines American counterculture, and why so many 60s and 70s jewelers were a part of it Who the most notable American jewelry artists are and why we need to capture their stories How Susan and Cindi developed their book, and why they hope other people will build on their research About Susan Cummins Susan Cummins has been involved in numerous ways in the visual arts world over the last 35 years, from working in a pottery studio, doing street fairs, running a retail shop called the Firework in Mill Valley and developing the Susan Cummins Gallery into a nationally recognized venue for regional art and contemporary art jewelry. Now she spends most of her time working with a private family foundation called Rotasa and as a board member of both Art Jewelry Forum and California College of the Arts. About Cindi Strauss Cindi Strauss is the Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design and Assistant Director, Programming at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). She received her BA with honors in art history from Hamilton College and her MA in the history of decorative arts from the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons School of Design. At the MFAH, Cindi is responsible for the acquisition, research, publication, and exhibition of post-1900 decorative arts, design, and craft. Jewelry is a mainstay of Cindi's curatorial practice. In addition to regularly curating permanent collection installations that include contemporary jewelry from the museum's collection, she has organized several exhibitions that are either devoted solely to jewelry or include jewelry in them. These include: Beyond Ornament: Contemporary Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2003–2004); Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2007); Liquid Lines: Exploring the Language of Contemporary Metal (2011); and Beyond Craft: Decorative Arts from the Leatrice S. and Melvin B. Eagle Collection (2014). Cindi has authored or contributed to catalogs and journals on jewelry, craft, and design topics, and has been a frequent lecturer at museums nationwide. She also serves on the editorial advisory committee for Metalsmith magazine. Additional Resources:  Museum of Fine Arts Houston Art Jewelry Forum  Photos: Police State Badge 1969/ 2007 sterling silver, 14k gold 2 7/8 x 2 15/16 x 3 15/16 inches Museum of Arts and Design, New York City, 2012.20 Diane Kuhn, 2012 PHOTO: John Bigelow Taylor, 2008 Portrait of William Clark in a bubble_2 1971                        photographer: Unknown Necklace for the American Taxpayer 1971 Brass with silver chain  17 " long (for the chain)  and 6.25 x 1.25 " wide for the hanging brass pendant. Collection unknown Dad's Payday 1968 sterling, photograph, fabric, found object 4 ½ x 4 x ¼ inches Merrily Tompkins Estate, Ellensburg Photo: Lynn Thompson Title: "Slow Boat" Pendant (Portrait of Ken Cory) Date: 1976 Medium: Enamel, sterling silver, wood, copper, brass, painted stone, pencil, ballpoint pen spring, waxed lacing, Tiger Balm tin, domino Dimensions: 16 3/4 × 4 1/8 × 1 in. (42.5 × 10.4 × 2.5 cm) Helen Williams Drutt Family Collection, USA Snatch Purse 1975 Copper, Enamel, Leather, Beaver Fur, Ermine Tails, Coin Purse 4 ½ x 4 x 3/8” Merrily Tompkins Estate, Ellensburg The Good Guys 1966 Walnut, steel, copper, plastic, sterling silver, found objects 101.6 mm diameter Museum of Arts and Design, NYC, 1977.2.102'                        PHOTO: John Bigelow Taylor, 2008 Fetish Pendant 1966 wood, brass, copper, glass, steel, paper, silver 3 ½ x 3 ½ x 5/8 inches Detroit Institute of Art, Founders Society Purchase with funds from the Modern Decorative Arts Group, Andrew L. and Gayle Shaw Camden Contemporary and Decorative Arts Fund, Jean Sosin, Dr. and Mrs. Roger S. Robinson, Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Danto, Dorothy and Byron Gerson, and Dr. and Mrs. Robert J. Miller / Bridgeman Images November 22, 1963 12:30 p.m. 1967 copper, silver, brass, gold leaf, newspaper photo, walnut, velvet, glass 6 ¼ x 5 x 7/8 inches Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Rose Mary Wadman, 1991.57.1 Front and back covers Pages from the book Transcript: What makes American jewelry American? As Susan Cummins and Cindi Strauss discovered while researching their book, In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture, contemporary American jewelry isn't defined by style or materials, but by an attitude of independence and rebellion. Susan, who founded Art Jewelry Forum, and Cindi, who is Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what it was like to interview some of the most influential American artists; why they hope their book will inspire additional research in this field; and why narrative jewelry artists were part of the counterculture, even if they didn't consider themselves to be. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Definitely, it's a history book, but it's not, because you really do get that flavor for who they are or what they were passionate about or what they were trying to express. I'm just curious; how did you distill all of this into counterculture? Was that something that you decided in a brainstorm? You could have come up with a lot of different things. Cindi: I'm going to let Susan to take that, because—and I admit this freely—I had a very specific idea of what the counterculture was and how people slotted into that. Through Susan and Damian, my understanding of the counterculture was broadened in such an incredible way. They really pushed me to open up my mindset and think about it in many different, layered ways, and I have benefited from that dramatically. So, Susan led that. Susan, I'll turn it over to you. Susan: O.K., and I'll try and answer. We had decided to focus on the 60s and 70s and limit it to that time period. That was the counterculture time period, and as I said before, there are so many in the craft world, which I was participating in during that time, that reflect the sensibilities of the counterculture. As we were interviewing these people, what was really interesting is that many of them didn't necessarily think of themselves of part of the counterculture. They thought of themselves as hardworking jewelers that couldn't be part of the counterculture because that was the dropout, don't do anything, take drugs part of the world. But that wasn't really the counterculture.  The counterculture was especially young people who were opposed to the way that people were living their lives. That got really defined in the 50s, which was a very austere, go to work, make money, buy a refrigerator, get a house and even if it was killing you, do this kind of life. They said, “We don't want that. We want a life that feels meaningful to us, that has real value.” In all kinds of different ways, that was what the counterculture consisted of: thinking in a different way about how life could be for us, something that's meaningful, something that you love doing, something that has some consideration of ecology and equal rights and all of the counterwar attitudes reflected in it. That was really what people wanted to do. The counterculture is big and broad.  A lot of people who thought, for example, that Fred Woell was a Boy Scout. If you asked Fred or you saw his papers or you asked his wife, “What kind of car did Fred drive?” A VW van. What kind of food did he eat? Natural foods. Did he build himself a house? Yes, he did, with solar panels on it. He was a counterculture guy. He just looked like a Boy Scout. A lot of the things you learn in the Boy Scouts were actually part of the counterculture, too, the survival skills and all of that. It's a funny thing to say, but I think in the process of writing this book, we convinced a lot of the jewelers we interviewed that they were part of the counterculture even though they hadn't realized it themselves either. Sharon: That's interesting. Did you enter this process thinking that these people were part of the counterculture, or was that something that came to you as put everything together? Susan: I think it was kind of there from the beginning, but not really. I think we discovered it along the way. In fact, I don't think we were thinking about having the word counterculture in the title. I think for a long time we thought it would be “American Jewelry in the 60s and 70s.” I think it was a provocative idea to put counterculture in the title. It might be that it was a bad idea because, as Cindi said, a lot of people have a narrow point of view as to what the counterculture is, but I hope that if anybody decides to pick up the book, they can find a much broader definition, which I think is the real definition. To limit it is not fair to the expression. Sharon: I think the book does broaden the definition. Before reading the book or looking at the book, I entered into it thinking of Sausalito. I grew up on the West Coast, so to me, the counterculture was Sausalito. My family and I drove through there once when I was a young person, so that was the counterculture, or Berkeley was the counterculture. I Googled the word counterculture, and it's interesting because it goes through all different periods of history that were counterculture. It wasn't just the 60s and 70s. Who did you feel it was wrenching to leave out of the book when you had make some decisions? Cindi: Before I would answer that specifically, to give a little more context, there were a number of jewelry artists who were personally active in all the ways we were highlighting in this book, but their jewelry itself didn't reflect that. We had long debates about how to deal with that. Ultimately, for better or for worse, it came down to the fact that at the end of the day, the book was about the jewelry. It was rooted in the actual works of art. There were artists whose jewelry did not reflect their personal lives. With those artists, we were able to include them in the book in terms of quotes and information that helped set the stage and provide information, whether it was about things from their own lives, if they were professors, what was in their program, but their jewelry wasn't necessarily featured. I'm thinking of someone like Eleanor Moty, who was incredibly helpful in terms of the interview that Susan did and being a sounding board, but her jewelry didn't make it into the book pictorially. There were others who were also like that.  I think I wouldn't necessarily call it gut-wrenching, but it was something we struggled with over a period of time, because these were artists who were very active; they were active in shows; they were teaching; they were going to Summervale; they were going to SNAG, some of them, some of them not. For me, Wayne Coulter is probably the big regret. I did an extensive interview with Wayne and his wife, Jan Brooks, and it was a great interview. He was very involved with Summervale, and a lot of his jewelry would have fit pictorially in the book, but we were never quite able to get the images and the materials we needed to include the jewelry. He's included, as is Jan, in terms of quotes and things like that. For me, that would be one that I regret. Sharon: This is not to say anybody's second tier. I don't mean that. Cindi: Oh no, not at all. Sometimes there are practicalities. This is a time when a lot of the artists don't even know, necessarily, where their jewelry from the late 60s or early 70s resides. Maybe they had slides of it, but those slides may not exist, or they may have been completely discolored. There were practical issues that made certain pieces and/or certain artists—we were unable to go as far as we wanted to. Susan, what do you think? Susan: Yeah, I completely agree with all that. I would say that we interviewed a lot of people that didn't get in the book. There was a lot of jewelry that started up right at the very end of the 70s and went into the 80s. We squeaked in a couple of those people, but what you have to think about is that we're showing you or talking about examples of people in various phases. Some people were very political. Some people weren't so political in their work necessarily, but they lived a counterculture lifestyle and participated in counterculture activities, and it shows up in their jewelry but not as strongly as in others. We tried to give a mix of examples of the things we were talking about, but as Cindi said, there were lots of people we interviewed that never showed up in the book. We must have interviewed Laurie Hall, for example, about three times. Her work isn't in the book, but Damian went on to write about her. That book will be coming out in the fall. We acquired an awful lot of information that didn't ever get in the book and people we interviewed that didn't get in the book. You just have to go with the most obvious choices at a certain point and think of them as examples of other people that you could have included, but you didn't. Maybe some people were upset by that, but you do have to make some decisions. As Cindi said, there are certain practical limitations. Sharon: I think I gave a birthday party when I was 13, and I was so traumatized by having to make decisions about the guest list. I always wonder about it, if you make decisions about who to put in and who to leave out. Do you know the name of the book about Laurie Hall? What's it called? Susan: It's called North by Northwest: The Stories of Laurie Hall. Or maybe The Jewelry of Laurie Hall. Sharon: That leads into my next question. Is there going to be a part two or an addition to the book you just wrote, In Flux? There's so much more material. Susan: Definitely, there's more material. Somebody needs to look at African-American jewelers. We barely got to include some aspects of that. Native American jewelers, too, have a whole history that we didn't really cover at all. These things are whole topics unto themselves, really. We hope someone will take up the mantle and find out more about that. There's a huge amount of continuing research. We don't have any plans to do that, so anybody listening can definitely take it up. Go for it. It's up to you. Sharon: It sounds like a great PhD project. Cindi: Yeah, it can be a PhD thesis. There could be a series of articles. It doesn't have to be a big book about something. You could do all whole symposium based on this topic. You started off with a question about our jewelry journey. I think this is and will be, for all of us, an ongoing journey. Susan and Damian have written this book on Laurie Hall. There will be other threads that, either collectively or individually, we'll want to take up in continuing our own journey off of this book, areas that piqued our interest and we'll go from there. As Susan said, we're hoping people will pick up the mantle. One of the things we learned through this process, and it's probably a lesson that should have been obvious to us beforehand, but the field of American jewelry is a young field. For most of its history, there have been dominant narratives. I'm part of that group of people who have helped with those dominant narratives. As a field evolves, you lay down the baseline, then you focus on individual artists, then you go back and start to layer in additional histories in a way that you can actually understand the full field. A lot of the artists we included in In Flux worked on the outskirts of what was previously the dominant narrative. I think as we proved, that doesn't make their work any less significant, influential, etc. from artists who were part of the dominant narrative. It's a phenomenal way for the field to continue to grow. I hope that as more institutions of all types focus on contemporary jewelry, it will engender additional layers of that story which will continue to propel the field forward. Sharon: Cindi, I noticed that when you look the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston website, you've been involved in a lot of online programming and symposia and things I didn't realize. I'm wondering when you're going to have a symposium on this subject. Cindi: It would be terrific. Up to this point, Susan and I have been invited to give talks. We did one with Craft in America last fall. We did with MAD. We've been invited on your jewelry podcast. I'm also going to be speaking for the Seattle Metals Guild Symposium next month. I would love to do a symposium. For me, in order to do a symposium right, it's not just about getting speakers together, which you can do virtually, but it's really about them coming together and having that in-person experience where you can have breakout sessions; you have the conversations in the hallways, all of those kinds of things. I would absolutely love to do that when it's safe to do it, which is not to say that—there are no current plans. I think our virtual talks have been fantastic, but it would be great to gather the tribe, so to speak, to gather people we interviewed for this book, to gather people who are interested and to share a day or two together to dive into this. I hope that can happen. Certainly, the door is open to it. I just think right now we're still figuring out what we can do in person and what we can't. Susan: I know many of those people are quite elderly at this point in time. Even as we were writing the book, people were dying. Cindi: Yeah, Ed Woell died. Ron Hill died, and now Nancy Gordon has died. Susan: Mary Tompkins passed away. Cindi: Mary Tompkins passed away. Several people had already passed away, but this history will not be quite the same unless people go and interview these older makers soon. This is part of the problem: with them dies a huge amount of information. It's impossible to know anything concrete about a jeweler unless you actually talk to them. Anyway, I hope that if people do want to take up this mantle or if they do a symposium, they do it soon, because they may be all gone by the time we get there. Sharon: People do it on Cartier and Renee Beauvois, and they're not around. Susan: They also kept better records and took better photographs. With those wealthy jewelry companies, it's very different than being a unique maker on your own in your little studio. Many of these people weren't even taking photographs of the work at the time necessarily, or if they were, certainly they were not great ones. They just clicked on a photo link on a slide back. This is not the wealthy, recorded advertising world of Cartier. This is a very different world. Cindi: As someone who has done a Cartier exhibition, I can also tell you that it's about the firm and about styles. You don't learn about who the individual designers were of X, Y and Z pieces, but Susan's right. For artists who are listening to this, it is incumbent upon you to document your work. Today, there are obviously tools that artists from the 60s and 70s could not have availed themselves of, which would have made it much easier. So, document your work, keep track of your work and update the way you document it, so that somebody 30 or 40 years from now who is wanting to do something in depth on you is not having to battle with an old technology that nobody knows how to use anymore, which then can make things invaluable. I'm old school. I'm a big believe in paper. I know that is completely against the way the world works, but I am wary. I have experience with recorded, even digital formats, that we don't have the equipment to use anymore; nobody knows how to use it. If you have a paper printout, you're never going to have that problem. I know that this is environmentally incorrect, that everybody's moving towards digital files. I have them myself, but I still like paper because it's what's going to be preserved for history. Sharon: That's very good advice about documenting. It benefits the artist now and makes life easier for those who follow as historians and people who want to look at it academically. Susan and Cindi, thank you so much for being with us today. It was so interesting. Susan, we look forward to your next part, 1A I guess we'll call it. Thank you so much. Susan: Thanks for having us, Sharon. It's been wonderful. Cindi: Thank you, Sharon. Sharon: Delighted to have you. Cindi: Please do let your audiences know that the book is widely available. My plug on all these things is that we know you can buy books from Amazon. Please buy your book from a local independent bookseller, or even better, come to the MFAH's website. You can buy it off of our website, which goes to support our museum's programs.   We will have images posted on the website. You can find us wherever you download your podcasts, and please rate us. Please join us next time, when our guest will be another jewelry industry professional who will share their experience and expertise. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.  

What you'll learn in this episode: The characteristics that define contemporary American jewelry What narrative art jewelry is, and why it was so prevalent in the 1960s and 70s What defines American counterculture, and why so many 60s and 70s jewelers were a part of it Who the most notable American jewelry artists are and why we need to capture their stories How Susan and Cindi developed their book, and why they hope other people will build on their research About Susan Cummins Susan Cummins has been involved in numerous ways in the visual arts world over the last 35 years, from working in a pottery studio, doing street fairs, running a retail shop called the Firework in Mill Valley and developing the Susan Cummins Gallery into a nationally recognized venue for regional art and contemporary art jewelry. Now she spends most of her time working with a private family foundation called Rotasa and as a board member of both Art Jewelry Forum and California College of the Arts. About Cindi Strauss Cindi Strauss is the Sara and Bill Morgan Curator of Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design and Assistant Director, Programming at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). She received her BA with honors in art history from Hamilton College and her MA in the history of decorative arts from the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons School of Design. At the MFAH, Cindi is responsible for the acquisition, research, publication, and exhibition of post-1900 decorative arts, design, and craft. Jewelry is a mainstay of Cindi's curatorial practice. In addition to regularly curating permanent collection installations that include contemporary jewelry from the museum's collection, she has organized several exhibitions that are either devoted solely to jewelry or include jewelry in them. These include: Beyond Ornament: Contemporary Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2003–2004); Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection (2007); Liquid Lines: Exploring the Language of Contemporary Metal (2011); and Beyond Craft: Decorative Arts from the Leatrice S. and Melvin B. Eagle Collection (2014). Cindi has authored or contributed to catalogs and journals on jewelry, craft, and design topics, and has been a frequent lecturer at museums nationwide. She also serves on the editorial advisory committee for Metalsmith magazine. Additional Resources:  Museum of Fine Arts Houston Art Jewelry Forum  Photos: Police State Badge 1969/ 2007 sterling silver, 14k gold 2 7/8 x 2 15/16 x 3 15/16 inches Museum of Arts and Design, New York City, 2012.20 Diane Kuhn, 2012 PHOTO: John Bigelow Taylor, 2008 Portrait of William Clark in a bubble_2 1971                        photographer: Unknown Necklace for the American Taxpayer 1971 Brass with silver chain  17 " long (for the chain)  and 6.25 x 1.25 " wide for the hanging brass pendant. Collection unknown Dad's Payday 1968 sterling, photograph, fabric, found object 4 ½ x 4 x ¼ inches Merrily Tompkins Estate, Ellensburg Photo: Lynn Thompson Title: "Slow Boat" Pendant (Portrait of Ken Cory) Date: 1976 Medium: Enamel, sterling silver, wood, copper, brass, painted stone, pencil, ballpoint pen spring, waxed lacing, Tiger Balm tin, domino Dimensions: 16 3/4 × 4 1/8 × 1 in. (42.5 × 10.4 × 2.5 cm) Helen Williams Drutt Family Collection, USA Snatch Purse 1975 Copper, Enamel, Leather, Beaver Fur, Ermine Tails, Coin Purse 4 ½ x 4 x 3/8” Merrily Tompkins Estate, Ellensburg The Good Guys 1966 Walnut, steel, copper, plastic, sterling silver, found objects 101.6 mm diameter Museum of Arts and Design, NYC, 1977.2.102'                        PHOTO: John Bigelow Taylor, 2008 Fetish Pendant 1966 wood, brass, copper, glass, steel, paper, silver 3 ½ x 3 ½ x 5/8 inches Detroit Institute of Art, Founders Society Purchase with funds from the Modern Decorative Arts Group, Andrew L. and Gayle Shaw Camden Contemporary and Decorative Arts Fund, Jean Sosin, Dr. and Mrs. Roger S. Robinson, Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Danto, Dorothy and Byron Gerson, and Dr. and Mrs. Robert J. Miller / Bridgeman Images November 22, 1963 12:30 p.m. 1967 copper, silver, brass, gold leaf, newspaper photo, walnut, velvet, glass 6 ¼ x 5 x 7/8 inches Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Rose Mary Wadman, 1991.57.1 Front and back covers Pages from the book Transcript: What makes American jewelry American? As Susan Cummins and Cindi Strauss discovered while researching their book, In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture, contemporary American jewelry isn't defined by style or materials, but by an attitude of independence and rebellion. Susan, who founded Art Jewelry Forum, and Cindi, who is Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what it was like to interview some of the most influential American artists; why they hope their book will inspire additional research in this field; and why narrative jewelry artists were part of the counterculture, even if they didn't consider themselves to be. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guests are Susan Cummins and Cindi Strauss, who, along with Damian Skinner, are the co-authors of In Flux: American Jewelry and the Counterculture. Susan is the founder of Art Jewelry Forum and for several decades drove the organization. Cindi Strauss is the Curator of Decorative Arts, Crafts and Design at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Susan and Cindi, welcome to the program. Susan: Thank you. Cindi: Thank you for having us, Sharon. Sharon: So glad to have you. Can you each give us a brief outline of your jewelry journey? Susan, do you want to start? Susan: Sure. My journey started in the 80s. I had a gallery in Mill Valley, California. I was showing various crafts, ceramics mostly, and a bit of glass, fiber, a whole grouping, and then I decided I should show jewelry. I don't really know why, because I didn't wear jewelry, but it sounded like a good idea. I started showing it, and I was very impressed with how smart and incredibly skilled the artists were. I continued to show that, and the gallery became known for showing jewelry. In 1997, I still had the gallery, and I decided along with numerous other craft groups that we should start an organization that represented the collectors of jewelry. I started Art Jewelry Forum with the help of several other people, of course. That has continued onto today, surprisingly enough, and it now includes not only collectors, curators and gallerists, but also artists and everybody who's interested in contemporary art jewelry. Sharon: It's an international organization. Susan: Yes, it's an international organization. It has a website with a lot of articles. We plan all kinds of things like trips to encourage people to get to know more about the field. I also was part of a funding organization, shall we say, a small private fund called Rotasa, and years ago we funded exhibitions and catalogues. That switched into funding specific things that I was working on instead of accepting things from other people. I've been very interested in publishing and doing research about this field because I feel that will give it more value and legitimacy. It needs to be researched. So, that's one of the reasons why this book came into being as well as Flocks' book. It really talks about the beginnings of American contemporary jewelry in the 60s and 70s. That's my beginning to current interest in jewelry. Sharon: I just wanted to say that people can find a lot more if they visit the Art Jewelry Forum website. We'll have links to everything we talk about on the show. Cindi? Cindi: Sure. My jewelry journey was surprising and happened all at once. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, had no contemporary jewelry in its collection until 2000, when we acquired an Art Smith necklace from 1948. That was my first real knowledge of post-Arts and Crafts jewelry and post-Mid-Century, people like Harry Bertoia. That led me to Toni Greenbaum's Messengers of Modernism catalogue, a fantastic resource for American jewelry from the 30s through the 50s. It opened a whole new field for me, and I started to think about how we should focus on some modern jewelry from that period to expand on the Art Smith necklace, because that Mid-Century design was a specialty of the institution.  Truly, I would say my life changed in respect to jewelry for the better in every way I could explain. When the museum acquired, in 2002, Helen Williams Drutt's private collection of artist-made contemporary jewelry, dating from 1963 to 2002 at the time of the acquisition, in one fell swoop, we acquired 804 pieces of international jewelry as well as sketchbooks and drawings and research materials. We began to build an extensive library. Helen opened her archives and we had recordings of artist interviews. It was just going from zero to sixty in three seconds and it was extraordinary. It was a field I knew really nothing about, so I was on a very steep learning curve. So many people in the field, from the artists to other curators to collectors—this is how I met Susan—were so generous to me in terms of being resources. The story about how the acquisition happened is familiar to probably many of your audience, so I'll keep it brief, which is to say that there was an exhibition of Gijs Bakker's jewelry that Helen organized for the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Sharon: Cindi, I'm going to interrupt you for a minute because a lot of people listening will not have heard of Gijs Bakker. Cindi: Sure. Gijs Bakker, one of the most prominent Dutch artists, began his career in the 1960s, along with wife, Emmy van Leersum, and was part of the group of Dutch jewelry artists who revolutionized the concept of contemporary jewelry using alter-native materials. They created a lot of photo-based work challenging the value system of jewelry and also challenging wearability. It was his photo-based work that was shown in a small exhibition at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in March 2002 as part of a citywide festival called Photofest, which is all photography-based work. It was through that exhibition, at the opening weekend—that's how I met Helen. I said to her, “This is something I don't know anything about. I'm interested in exploring it. I'm starting to build a collection for the museum. Could we meet and have coffee and talk?” So we met, and I peppered her with a lot of questions and said, “Could I call on you for advice in terms of building a collection?” Of course, at this time she had the gallery, and she said, “Well, you know, I have a collection,” and I said, “Yes, I know, and I understand it's going to the Philadelphia Museum of Art,” her hometown museum. She said, “Not necessarily. We haven't had any formal talks about that.” So, one thing led to another, and six months later, we signed papers to acquire the collection. That set me off on my initial five-year journey, which resulted in the exhibition and catalogue “Ornament as Art: Contemporary Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection” that opened in Houston and traveled to Washington, D.C., to Charlotte, North Carolina, and to Tacoma, Washington. After that point, I felt that I was really steeped in the field. I have, since that point, been adding works to the collection. It was always going to be a long-term commitment and journey for the museum. We have works installed all over the museum in relationship to other contemporary art, whether it's photography, prints and drawings, sculpture, painting. We also have a robust presentation of jewelry in our departments' galleries. It is an ongoing journey, just like with Susan. It's a journey that never ends, happily. There are always new artists to discover and new ideas. Part of that is our meeting of the mind, if you will, and then with Damian, is what resulted in this book. Sharon: How did you come to write the book? Susan, you started to mention it. The research in this is jaw-dropping. How did you decide to write the book? Why this particular period, the two of you? Susan: We decided to write the book because I was wondering what's American about American jewelry. Europeans have done a lot of research and writing about their beginnings, but I didn't see a document or a book that really talked about the American origins. As Cindi mentioned, Gijs Bakker started in the 60s. So did American contemporary jewelry, but it's a very different story than the European one. We wanted to talk to the people who are still alive now, so we did tons of interviews for the book. We specifically concentrated on the pioneers who were responding to the political and social events of the time. In other words, we were investigating those artists who were considered narrative artists, because that was the defining feature of American art to those out of the country. We wanted to discover who was making this work and what were they saying in their narrative, so really answering “What was American about American jewelry?” We did tons of research through old documents of the American Crafts Library. We went all over the country and interviewed, and it was about a five-year-long process to get this point. The book is incredibly condensed. You can feel that there's a lot there, but it took a lot to condense it down to that.  Really, what we hope is that it's an easy-to-read story about the stories that jewelers were telling at the time, which was the origin of all that's come down to us now. It was the beginning of the development of university programs in the country. They just were in the process of expanding them, and people were learning how to make things. Nobody had a lot of skills in this country, so everybody had to learn how to make things. There were a lot of alternative ways of passing around information. The counterculture, we regarded that not as hippies per se, although hippies were part of it, but also a lot about the political and social issues of the time and how people responded to them. The ethos of the time, the values that people developed really became part of the craft counterculture itself. The craft field is based on a lot of those ways of working in the world, a sort of hope and trying to create a new society that had more values than the 50s had aspired to for each individual. People were trying to find ways to have valuable lives, and doing something like making something yourself and selling it at a craft fair became a wonderful alternative for many people who had the skill to do that. That was a very different way of having a life, shall we say, and that's how American jewelry developed: with those values and skills. I still see remnants of it in the current field. That's my focus. Cindi, do you have some things you want to add to that? Cindi: Yeah, the larger public's ideas and thoughts about American jewelry from that period were rooted in a history and an aesthetic that emerged largely on the East Coast, but certainly spread, as Susan said, with the development of university programs. That was an aesthetic that was largely rooted in the organic modernism of Scandinavian influence, as well as what had come before in America in terms of modernist studio jewelry. There's a history there in the narrative, and that narrative played out in early exhibitions. It played out in the first SNAG exhibition in 1970 in St. Paul, which is considered one of those milestones of the early American studio jewelry movement.  Now, we knew that there were artists like Fred Woell, Don Tompkins, Ken Cory, Merrily Tompkins, who were on the West Coast and working in a different vein, as Susan said, a narrative vein, and who were often working with assemblage techniques and found materials and were making commentary on issues of the day. Within the accepted history of that period, they were a minority, with the exception of Fred Woell and really Ken Cory. Their work was not as widely known, as widely collected, as widely understood. Damian and Susan and I started after we thought, as Susan said, “What is American about American jewelry?”  Fred Woell was an artist who immediately came to mind as embodying a certain type of Americanness. We had an extraordinary trip to visit with Fred's widow, Pat Wheeler, and to the see the studio and go through some of his papers. When we went, we thought we would be doing a monograph on Fred Woell. It was on that trip that we understood that it was a much larger project, and it was one that would encompass many more artists. As part of our research, there were certain artists who were known to us, and our hope was that we would rediscover artists who were working intently during that period who had been lost to history for whatever reason. There were also artists whose work we were able to reframe for the reasons that Susan mentioned: because of their lifestyle, their belief system, the way they addressed or responded to major issues during the day. So, we started developing these list of artists. I think what readers will find in the book is looking at some of the well-known artists, perhaps more in depth and in a new frame of analysis, but also learning about a plethora of other artists. For us, it was five years of intense work. There's a tremendous amount of research that has gone into this book, and from what we've been hearing, it has enlightened people about a period. It's not an alternative history, but it is an additional history. We hope it will inspire people to pick up the mantle and go forth because, of course, one has constraints in terms of word counts for publishing. At a certain point, you have to get down to the business of writing and stop the research, but there are so many threads that we hope other scholars, curators, students, interested parties will pick up and carry forth. In some ways we were able to go in depth, and in other ways we were able to just scratch the surface of what has been a fascinating topic for all of us. Sharon: I have a lot of questions, but first, I just wanted to mention that SNAG is the Society of North American Goldsmiths, in case people don't know. Can you explain, Susan or Cindi, what narrative jewelry is? Cindi: There's no one definition. Everybody would describe it a little bit differently, but I think a basic definition is jewelry that tells a story, that uses pictorial elements to tell a story. Whatever that story is can range from the personal to the public, to, in our case, responding to things like the Vietnam War, politics, etc. Susan, do you want to add to that? Susan: It's a very difficult thing to do when you think about. Narratives usually have a storyline from this point to that point to the next point. Here's a jeweler trying to put a storyline into one object, one piece. It is tricky to bring enough imagery that's accessible to the viewer together into one piece to allow the viewer to make up the story that this is about or the comment it's trying to make. You have to be very skilled and smart to make really good narrative jewelry. Sharon: It sounds like it would be, yes. When you realized what this book was going to entail—it sounds like you didn't start out thinking this was going to be such a deep dive—were you excited, or were you more like, “I think I'd probably rather run in the other direction and say, ‘Forget it; I can't do it'”? Susan: I don't think at any point did we stop and think, “Oh, this is a gigantic project.” We just thought, “Let's see. This person's interesting; O.K., let's talk to this person. Oh, gosh, they said these about this other person. Let's talk to them.” You just go step by step. I don't think, at any point, did any of us realize how vast a project this was until the end, probably. Cindi: Yeah, I would say because it happened incrementally, deep dive led to another and another. We would have regular meetings not only over Skype, but we would get together in person, the three of us, for these intense days in which we would talk about—we each had different areas we were focusing on. We'd bring our research together and that would lead to questions: “Should we explore this avenue?” Then someone would go and explore this avenue and come back, and we would think, “Maybe that wasn't as interesting as we thought it was going to be,” or maybe it was far more interesting than we thought, so it spun out a number of different avenues of research.  At a certain point, we started looking at the most important threads that were coming out and we were able to organize them as umbrellas, and then look at subthemes and think about the artists. It became like a puzzle. We had pockets of deep research, whether it was the in-person artist interviews or whether it was the archival research that was done, whether it was the general research. Damian and I were not alive during this time. Susan was, which was fantastic because I learned a lot about this in history class and school. Damian is a New Zealander, so he was coming at it from an international perspective. There was a lot of reading he did about American history, but Susan was the one gave us all the first-person accounts in addition to the artists. She participated in the American Craft Council Craft Fairs and was able to balance the sometimes emotionless history books with the first-person experiences that made it come alive. I think that's what you see throughout the book. It was important to us that the book would be readable, but it was also important to us that it would have a flavor of the times. When you do oral history interviews, there are many different kinds of questions that can be asked. We set out to talk not only about the jewelry that artists were making, but their lives, what was important to them, how they felt. The richness of experiences and emotions that came out in those interviews really inflected the book with feeling like you were there and a part of what these artists were thinking. This is a 2 part episode please subscribe so you can get part 2 as soon as its released later this week. 

The VA.gov website serves critical functions for those who serve our country. Built on #DecoupledDrupal and #Metalsmith as a #StaticSiteGenerator, the Department of Veterans' Affairs website is one of the most compelling and robust examples of a powerful decoupled #Drupal architecture serving #StaticSites and #Jamstack-driven deployment. Plus it uses #GraphQL to mediate the back-and-forth communication between Drupal and the VA.gov static site. In this Tag1 Team Talks episode with Preston So (Editor in Chief at Tag1 Consulting), Michael Meyers (Managing Director at Tag1 Consulting), and special guest Neil Hastings (Tech Lead for the Core CMS team at VA.gov), learn more about how the VA.gov website offers functionality not just for its core users but also for content editors and even outside developers, thanks to its open government focus and Lighthouse APIs for developer-contributed applications.

Sarah is a wife, mom, metalsmith, and entrepreneur. She worked in jewelry design and sculpture for over a decade after graduating from art school. When her first son was old enough, she started letting him play in the studio where he had access to all of her tools. This is where the idea for Maker Monkey Workshop was born. She enjoyed watching her son grow more confident and capable with every strike of the hammer and wanted to give that to other children.  In addition to growing confidence, she has a desire to get kids to feel the sensitivity of an artist as much as the strength of a builder without categorizing either as being exclusively masculine or exclusively feminine. You can follow along with Sarah on Instagram and her Website.

LEAH WAS BORN AND RAISED IN MONTAUK, NEW YORK IN 1987. SHE RECEIVED HER BFA IN FINE ART SCULPTURE FROM ACADEMY OF ART UNIVERSITY IN LATE 2012. WHILE THERE, SHE EARNED THE DISTINCTION OF BEST EMERGING ARTIST. IN FEBRUARY 2013, HER JEWELRY WAS FEATURED ON THE RUNWAY AT MERCEDES BENZ FASHION WEEK IN NEW YORK AS PART OF A COLLABORATION WITH FASHION DESIGNER, TERESA FIELD AND TEXTILES DESIGNER, JAMES THAI. HER WORK HAS BEEN PUBLISHED IN METALSMITH MAGAZINE AS WELL AS IN CAST, A COFFEE TABLE BOOK FEATURING ART AND OBJECTS MADE USING HUMANITY'S MOST TRANSFORMATIONAL PROCESS. IN 2016, HER WORK WAS PART OF A FEATURED EXHIBITION AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF METAL. SHE CURRENTLY LIVES IN OAKLAND, AND WELDS OUT OF HER STUDIO IN OAKLAND, CA.  You can follow along with Leah on Instagram and her Website.

1 Kings 7:13-14 ESV 13 And King Solomon sent and brought Hiram from Tyre. 14 He was the son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in bronze. And he was full of wisdom, understanding, and skill for making any work in bronze. He came to King Solomon and did all his work. HIRAM, THE METALSMITH. There are three persons named Hiram in the bible. The first two are the King of Tyre[1 Kings 5:1] and the grandson of Benjamin.[1 Chron 8:3-5] But, another man named Hiram worked on Solomon's temple as a metalsmith. He was from Tyre, as was his father, and his mother was from the tribe of Naphtali. “Hiram the metalsmith is referred to as Huram in 2 Chronicles 4:11 but called Huram-abi in 2 Chronicles 2:13 and 4:16. Abi means “master.”[ https://www.gotquestions.org/Huram-Hiram.html] He was full of wisdom, understanding, and skill for making any work in bronze. Like Hiram, it's important to know our gifts and skills. Let's be aware that all of us had at least a gift from the Spirit. Paul said, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.” [1 Cor 12:4-6] Do you know what is your gift? Moreover, Hiram made himself available in times of need. And, he did an excellent job [see 1 Kings 7:15-58] Doesn't God say, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.”[Ecc 9:10] Our time and opportunity may not come again. Let's be “making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”[Eph 5:16,17] Identifying our giftedness and making ourselves available are what we need in effectively serving the Lord. Who you are [ with your gifts] is God's gift to you. What we do with our lives [ in using our gifts] is our gift to Him. ------------------------- Visit and FOLLOW Gospel Light Filipino on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram

In this episode Sam meets metalsmith, jewelry maker, and entrepreneur, Halie Conyers. They chat about her artistic family, metal smithing, her grandmother’s abstract paintings, the renaissance in Detroit, the first ring she ever made, chainmail shoulder pads, the story behind the jewelry, connecting with people, magnifying glasses, lab made diamonds, and flash-points.

Too often, we exile the parts of us that hold complex emotions and difficult parts of our story at the expense of our wholeness. And not respecting our own wholeness in favor of living a compartmentalized life is perpetuated in the spaces we live and lead.   So, we hide away the things that we've been taught to believe are not acceptable—and what we hide is often rooted from the soul of what makes us unique and feel most alive.   Making space to lead complexity means signing up to navigate emotions, beliefs, and perspectives that do not fit into a tidy box.   This is the call right now. To dig into nuance and hang out in this place of complexity requires awareness that cannot be put back into the proverbial toothpaste tube.   This is super vulnerable.   But remember, respecting the whole person still requires boundaries, honoring core values, and developing systems that move you and your business forward. The fear of chaos is more about the fear of change–and what that change means for our own safety and status.   What we are seeing is how leadership that respects the whole person is rewriting the rules on what is professional and appropriate.   Oh, the rules.   You know the rules... the shoulds about what is professional and ok for business and work and what is not.   These rules crush our souls along with our clarity of voice and desire to create. And they continue to dehumanize and marginalize.   Approaching business and people with a perspective that values all parts of those they lead requires doing the inner work to navigate the complexity of emotions and lived experiences with compassion and curiosity instead of shame and correction.   My guest today lives this work and this approach.   Megan Auman is a jewelry designer, metalsmith, educator, and entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in selling art through a variety of channels.   Currently, Megan is running her eponymous jewelry line and the online community Artists & Profit Makers for fellow creatives who sell high-end products. A best-selling CreativeLive instructor, Megan's designs have been featured in Elle Decor, Better Homes & Gardens, Cooking Light and on top-rated blogs like Design*Sponge.   Listen to the full episode to hear: How Megan discusses how we can care but not be burdened by judgment–from ourselves or others. I love this insight she offered. Listen for Megan's discussion around shame, especially around our workspaces and what we charge for our services. Notice how Megan approached her own rumble with anxiety that shifted so much for her.   Learn more about Megan Auman: meganauman.com Artists & Profit Makers Follow Megan on Instagram   Learn more about Rebecca: rebeccaching.com Work With Rebecca Sign up for the Weekly Rumble Email   Resources from this episode: thanks, mom - MEGAN AUMAN The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech by William Deresiewicz Art Juice Podcast: Are You a Painter or an Artist? with Seth Godin  

This week, Wes and Todd talk with Ira Sherman. Sherman talks about how he got his start in art, his mechanized sculpture, his series “Panaceas to Persistent Problems”, Chastity Couture – Impenetrable Devices, public art projects, jewelry, esthetic mechanical engineering & design, fashion shows, process & technique, Bitfactory, air muscles, flea market mechanisms, public art projects, jewelry, and making and promoting work. Check out Ira Sherman’s work at is website: www.irasherman.comSee Ira Sherman’s work, “Heartfelt” and “E. Detox”, at Bitfactory Gallery through February 11th, 2021 at 851 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO 80204 – www.bitfactory.netFollow Ira Sherman on Social Media:Facebook - www.facebook.com/ira.sherman.5Videos of Ira talking about his work:Discovery Channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpxleHANIx8&app=desktopRocky Mountain PBS Arts District - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFs8dFvGbG8&feature=youtu.beRMS Presentation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOG6WKZCWqY&feature=youtu.beCremisteric Reflex Corset - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZePrbe2OKnU

Theresa is a self described metalsmith, artist and educator. She is also a wife and Mom. Theresa graduated from art school with a BFA and later returned to get a masters degree in art education and currently teaches art at a local high school. Her art is inspired by natural textures, patterns, collected objects, and is hand-crafted in her home studio. She primarily works in metal fabrication and casting but also enjoys exploring different media such as book art, ceramic sculpture and mold making. You can find and follow along with Theresa on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and her Website.

Gioia Stanley is a Fly Fishing Guide and Metalsmith residing on Cape Breton Island. We chat about using the pandemic to focus on her jewelry business, some local environmental issues, and drink some great local beer. You can follow her @ Insta - @metalandmayflies Website - https://www.metalandmayflies.com/ Follow Live Life In Tents @ Instagram Visit our website Shop our clothing Follow Lee @ Instagram

Metalsmith and jewelry maker Rina of Pure Whimsy Jewelry talks with Shop Vocal's Heidi Barraza about the challenges faced by many artist business people during the COVID pandemic and how she's overcoming those challenges. With galleries and many retail stores closed, Rina had to turn to Social Media and her own brand new website to keep her business going. https://www.purewhimsyjewelry.com/

This bonus episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is presented by Rewind.The secret to productivity & success isn't a system, it's a mindset. Metalsmith and entrepreneur Megan Auman returns to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast to discuss how she's cultivated an "investment mindset" and the power of mindset in business.Key Takeaways:How to take a vacation as a entrepreneurDon't be so hard on yourselfCultivating mindfulnessHow to make big financial decisionsMegan Auman is a jewelry designer, metalsmith, educator and entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in selling art through a variety of channels. In addition to running her eponymous jewelry line, she is the founder of Designing an MBA, which features business thinking for artists and makers, and Artists & Profit Makers, an online mentorship community. A best-selling CreativeLive instructor, her designs have been featured in Elle Decor, Better Homes & Gardens, Cooking Light and on top-rated blogs like Design*Sponge. Her newest class, Sell Without Shame, helps artists and makers find and articulate the value in their work.Links Mentionedmeganauman.comDesigning an MBAIG:@meganaumanSponsorsRewindNever miss an episodeSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsJoin Kurt's newsletterHelp the showAsk a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook GroupLeave a reviewSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsWhat's Kurt up to?See our recent work at EthercycleSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelApply to work with Kurt to grow your store.

In this episode, we talk about corruption in Nigeria, as well as the intricacies of jewelry making. store page: https://my.sendbox.co/laetajewellery Instagram pages: Laeta handmade jewelry Metalsmith journey joys youtube channel --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/nappyboys/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nappyboys/support

Megan Auman is a jewelry artist from Pennsylvania. She majored in metalsmithing in college and now makes stunning jewelry from steel and silver. She has many years of experience with retail sales as well as showing her creations at wholesale trade shows. She now teaches other artists how to profit from their creativity through her classes and coaching. Show notes for all of these episodes can be found on my website at https://suzanneredmond.com/my-podcast/list-of-artists/

Hilary Halstead Scott shares how their grant program has helped Halstead Bead build inbound links, traffic, industry authority and more. We also chat about her sales tax advocacy efforts and where reform progress stands today. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/2VBHim0  Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

Kate interviews Robin Callahan, Jewelry designer, Metalsmith, Lapidary Artist and founder of Robin Callahan designs, LLC. Robin's passion for her work is apparent in her beautiful creations. You would truly think she had been doing this all her life, but she pursued this long time talent and passion just 6 years ago and found her true life path and purpose, as well as, the joy of creation whe now enjoys. We will hear Robins'story and I promise it will inspire you. Tune in for a motivating show!

Quick show notes Our Guest: Jayson J. Phillips What he'd like for you to see: The Media Developers Discord | His Live coding on Twitch His JAMstack Jams: Getting back to simplicity on the web | Tools like Netlify His Musical Jam: Bootsy Collins - I'd Rather Be With You | Karen Harding - Say Something Bryan Robinson 0:05 Hello, everyone, welcome to another fun packed episode of That's My Jamstack, the podcast where we ask that difficult question, what's your jam in the Jamstack? In this week's episode, we chat with Jason J. Phillips, Director of Engineering at a 2U, boot camp instructor and a media developer expert. Bryan Robinson 0:23 Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to mention our sponsor take shape, stick around after the interview to find out more about their content platform or head over to takeshape.io/thatsmyjamstack for more information. Bryan Robinson 0:41 All right, Jason, thanks for being on the show with us today. Jayson J. Phillips 0:43 Appreciate you, Bryan. Glad to be here. Bryan Robinson 0:45 Cool. So tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do for work? What do you do for fun? Jayson J. Phillips 0:49 Yeah, so by day, I am a director of engineering for boot camp applications at 2U. We house a lot of boot camps web development. FinTech, UX, and a couple others through extension schools at universities. And so at night, I also teach web development and data visualization boot camps, most recently through the UC Berkeley Extension. And University of Denver was my most recent class. Bryan Robinson 1:18 Cool. So you're doing actual technology for companies that are doing boot camps through schools? Is that right? Jayson J. Phillips 1:25 Yeah. So the team that I that I oversee and manage runs a slate of applications that's for all parts of the learning aspect. So we build tools for instructing as we build tools for our students in our boot camps. We integrate LMS as for our learning platforms, so everything from the student is already enrolled to the student graduating, my team plays a role in their software journey. It's never a dull moment, pretty awesome. Bryan Robinson 1:53 So what do you do for fun outside? Obviously, if you're if you're teaching at nights too, then there's not a whole lot of room for that but what's what's your idea of fun. Jayson J. Phillips 2:00 Yeah. So I tend to run far away from technology for fun. While I do enjoy programming and you know tinkering around on my off time, I tend to be away from the house. So hiking outdoor activities. I'm a big cyclist and runner. I'm still trying to eventually chip away at hopefully running for the half marathons in 50 states I've allowed nine states now. So yeah, I try to make up for all the sedentary sitting at the desk by running myself until I can't run anymore. Bryan Robinson 2:36 Cool, so do you do like competitive or re you just doing it like those half marathons just to do the half marathons? Jayson J. Phillips 2:43 Yes. So my tagline is I don't run fast I run far. So that not competitively but I definitely enjoy a lot of the runs for fun and just to beat my my own personal times and then doing some team adventure races. Like there's a series called Ragnar where it's a team of 12 split between two vans and you run 200 miles over 36 hours. Bryan Robinson 3:09 Wow. I'm out of breath for a mile. And that's about that's about as much as I can go. So that is super impressive. Jayson J. Phillips 3:15 I mean, those races is all about the team. Because again, I run far not fast. So on the wrong team I can be probably very disruptive to a group, but it works out well. Bryan Robinson 3:26 Very cool. So So tell us what was your kind of entry point into the idea of the Jamstack or into static sites or wherever you found your way into this cool community? Jayson J. Phillips 3:35 Yeah, so I think the thing that hit me right away about Jamstack is that my first experience on the web, you know, was all static. Back in about 2001 2002, there was a popular platform called Graymatter written by this gentleman on Noah Gray, and it was written in Perl, but it it would take all your content, as text files and all your comments and actually generate static output for your site. So while the compilation step because it would recompile your entire site. So if you had thousands of pages as a blog, and you know, hundreds or thousands of comments, it would take forever. But once it was done, you had this beautiful site that just ran. It had the notion of templating. So I was like really one of the first experiences I ever got of playing around with a static site in any form. And so jumping back into like the modern era, I think it was around 2013. Before then I'd play around with Jekyll and Octopress for a couple years to replace the WordPress sites I've been working on. And then I dove into Wintersmith and Blacksmith was like some of the firt like early NodeJS, static site generators I've worked on. Bryan Robinson 4:46 So I'm curious real fast, because this was actually a conversation I had the other day about Wintersmith and Metalsmith and all all those kinds of first node static site generators and kind of the idea of like, why didn't those take off? Whereas potentially, like, now we've got stuff like, you know, eleventy kind of taking that role. But then on top of that, you know, obviously Gatsby and, and Nuxt and all that. Do you have any thoughts on that? Like, having used that, I used it a little bit, and it was over my head at the time. But like, what, what do you think about that? Jayson J. Phillips 5:20 Yeah, I think the barrier to entry lowered in terms of the setup, right, so I would say the first time I encountered Wintersmith and Blacksmith and a couple other of those types of sites, it was the same thing. It's like, Alright, this seems like a lot of configuration. I got these crazy Gulp processes or some other build process where now, especially with the advent of create react app and other tools, even in Angular and other ecosystems. It's much easier to get a common set of defaults that are a little bit opinionated, but enough that you don't have to mess with it to get started and you can kind of customize as you go, and I think that is what allowed Jekyll to take off when it first came out. Was that outside of a few hours sensible configuration in a YAML file, you could just write markdown and run it as default. It took very little in the way of getting started with it. Bryan Robinson 6:11 Yeah, the configuration is definitely it was a it was a big pain. I mean, honestly, some days when you're just trying to work on a project real fast, it can still be a pain if you don't actually reach for all these tools. Jayson J. Phillips 6:20 Yeah, I mean, it's, this is like the beauty of the the abstractions that we love building on top of, right, let's say, I really think it was just a maturing of the node ecosystem. And also just now we're within arm's length of a tool in almost any ecosystem now, but especially within JavaScript, Bryan Robinson 6:37 in fact, like the cool thing is like we're seeing projects coming up that are like refactoring Jekyll like there's Bridgetown nowadays. That is, you know, trying to say all right, we need a modern Ruby static site generator and Jekyll is just been around the block a few too many times. Yeah, that's Jayson J. Phillips 6:53 And I love to see it right. I think Jekyll for you know really brought static sites back into the forefront. And also outside of purely technical circles, you know, for other people to actually understand the care about it and see what the benefits were. So I think, you know, as we have these round Robins of, hey, this community is pushing that community ideas further And beyond that, who knows where we'll end up in 2025. It'll probably be something where we think the page gets created and the site's updated in like nanoseconds, Bryan Robinson 7:23 hey, there's that there's a JavaScript library for for reading brain process. So who knows? So I'm also curious. So So you've been you've been doing static sites for a long time with with Graymatter kind of being that that first entry point way back in the day. My first entry point was a little bit later, a few years after that with movable type blue. I'm wondering like, like, obviously, we're way better than those systems were back then. I remember I had a blog. They had thousands of posts for newspaper I worked for and it was like a 40 minute compilation step to deal with that. Do you think? Do you think that that timing was kind of the the downside of the static stuff? And is that is that why you think maybe we went dynamic for a number of years and only now coming back with the speed that we've got? Jayson J. Phillips 8:13 Yeah, I do think it had a lot to do with the company system, when b2, which was like the precursor to WordPress first came out, right, like it was competing with MovableType and a couple others at the time, and those were winning out. But then once someone saw that, hey, you could install this on a server and click a button and now you have a blog. And it starts out right away and you can add post right away. I think that's where the shine of the newness of this dynamic content sites came into play. And then I think there was also the piece of we didn't have, I think as advanced ways, generally available to structure content in static sites, whereas WordPress made that a bit easier to reason. So the tools like Drupal, where you could create structure around your content and understand like, what do I mean, when I'm creating a blog post? What do I mean when I'm creating a static page? And I think we will type in those tools as they moved along that over time, didn't have that really as well along with the long compilation steps. Bryan Robinson 9:17 Well, I know even like, later in the game with WordPress at the agency I worked at, we use a plugin called Advanced custom fields, almost any WordPress site we built had that by default, because that structured data was so important. And WordPress, I mean, out of the box didn't give give you a whole lot of structured data. So I think that's an interesting thing as well. But that's that's seeing a resurgence as well in terms of like, we want granularly structured data. Jayson J. Phillips 9:42 Yeah, and especially with a lot of the headless, headless CMS tools out. The awesome part is that there's a lot of different options that allow you to structure that content based on who's structuring it right. So like, with Sanity, you can reflect that in JavaScript files with other tools reflected in the CMS itself. So at the accessibility of structuring that content is really available to whatever type role needs that level of granularity to control it. So I think those tools also helped a lot. And, you know, even like, the pushes that we've had for Semantic Web and semantic structuring of content, even in just markup files and talking about what was it, like microformats, and all these other things, like a lot of that has kind of pushed us to where we are today. Bryan Robinson 10:28 Totally agree. So So we've mentioned a lot of different technologies. We've mentioned a lot of different things from from honestly, the history of the past almost 19 years now. What what's kind of your jam in the Jamstack? What's your favorite service or product? Or maybe it's just a philosophy or a framework? Where are you digging on right now? Jayson J. Phillips 10:45 Yeah, I think for me is getting back to this the simplicity of index page on the web. You know, like a lot of the things that we talked about, I that's what I enjoy most about the philosophies and the approaches of Jamstack You know, as an example, there was a client that I worked on back in 2008. For Fairmont International, a huge international chain of hotels. Every single page was its own index page. It was Yeah, every single page was a folder with an index page in it. For every single locale, language pair, they support it, which was over 50. So at any given moment, I was SFTPing like, hundreds of files, if we haven't changed a global header, and it wasn't a server side include, we had to change it on hundreds of pages. So I think just this approach that we can take these modern tools, and still come up with the simplicity of just another static page is super awesome. Outside of that, I am a huge fan of Netlify. We use it a lot at work to for like AV testing and for launching a bunch of previews for for our deploys for some of our front end applications that are built in react, which allows us to quickly test for UX changes Things like that. So, yeah, Netlify has been increasingly, I've been increasingly using a lot of the portfolio tools. So I, I dig it a lot for my personal blog and other things. Bryan Robinson 12:10 It's really hard to beat. Just the fact that it's all in one like you want you want serverless function, no problem. You want forums, no problem. You want just simple deploy of an HTML page. No problem. Jayson J. Phillips 12:22 Yeah. And I think also, even with stuff like forms, right, I think that solves a problem too, that we had back in the MovableType and other eras. And also in the first wave of static blogs, where we had to rely on Disqus or all these other external tools to get comments and then injected back into our sites. Now we have the full control of being able to build what we want, and or integrate suites. Like I know Gatsby studio is like kind of building up as well. Vercel has got a great, awesome set of tools, with Now or I guess they call that Vercel Now as well. But yeah, I think, you know, with these all in one suites that are leveraging these other platforms, they also make it easier for us to deal with lambda without having to jump into the AWS world and learn about security groups, everything else. So it's pretty awesome. Bryan Robinson 13:10 I had never touched a serverless function until Netlify rolled out their functions, just because it was just too big a pain to go into the into the GUI interface and deal with all that nonsense. I was like, Oh, I have it in your GitHub repository. No problem. Jayson J. Phillips 13:23 Yeah, just that that hole, just put it in a in a single folder. Let us know what folder it is. and it pulls up. I wish we had that when lambda was first being talked about, because that probably would have gotten a lot more adoption. Bryan Robinson 13:35 That would probably be two or three years ahead of where we're at right now. Jayson J. Phillips 13:37 Yeah. It's because I tried lamda once before that, and it was like, and it took me this long, a few years before and I just started playing with Netlify functions maybe like two weeks ago. So and I love how simple it is. Yeah, Bryan Robinson 13:52 You can just a Hello World example takes you know, five minutes to get up and running. It's beautiful. So So how are you using these kind of Jamstack philosophies at work, you know, with all these boot camps, and also, you know, personally, you mentioned your, your blog, but but kind of browse through what you're what you're using right now and how things are going for you. Jayson J. Phillips 14:11 Cool. Yeah, so. So at a previous job, we're using a lot of static page generation for our marketing site and letting that be cached in our system. So that marketing site was lightning fast. It was all static markup. And then we just use the API's for our back end financial platforms to integrate with authentication or integrate stock tickers, all those types of things. So what it enabled us to do was to quickly iterate on our marketing pages, and let the actual full, single page application stay on its own structure. And then it allows us to play with things like mono repos, which allowed us to have like share the common elements between all the different sites, but split architectures where needed at my current role one of our student facing platforms, we use the branch preview feature with Netlify to steady generate our sites and That's probably saved us, I can't tell you how many hours from our own QA process to now, and has made it so much easier to be able to switch between branches change, see the changes, see what changes look like in an integration branch before we actually roll that into master and release it. Jayson J. Phillips 15:16 So that's been super awesome. And then personally, so I do use Sanity.io for their headless CMS solution. I've really enjoyed having a clean interface to go in and write push a button and save it and push another button. And it goes off to the races to build everything. And so just this notion of my site can statically regenerate it whenever I want it to be like, it doesn't have to be recompiled unless I push that button also gives me an interesting level of control over content publishing that I didn't have before. Right, instead of me worrying about some systems timing. I can just say, all right, I release pages every Friday, but I can create my own editorial process around that before we statically build that site on the production. So that's been super awesome for me as well. Bryan Robinson 15:59 The whole idea of having an editorial process and all that is definitely something that is super powerful when it comes to especially like you mentioned, the deploy previews and all that, like you can send it, you can send preview links out to like, get feedback on a post before you launch it. Jayson J. Phillips 16:12 Yeah. And it makes it also makes code reviews, much more accessible and less obstructive, right. So if your reviews are really going to be around the functionality of the code, you can, instead of having to pull it down, you can review the code within GitHub, which is expanded their like code review tools a lot, and just the ease of reviewing code in the site. But then you have the fully launched version on that deploy branch, which, again, just makes that much easier. And then it allows you to do things like hey, I have a similar branch that we can wire up for the API so we can test that API changes. It's just it's just being able to split concerns where you need to at different parts of the process is pretty solid. Bryan Robinson 16:54 So out of curiosity, since since you're doing tech for a lot of these boot camps, and you're and you're teaching web development, Are these things being taught in the boot camps and in the classes? Or is it more traditional Dev, and then oh, by the way, don't forget, there's this new thing coming out, too. Jayson J. Phillips 17:09 So I think there's a mix. For our classes in particular, we do start with a static approach by telling them all about GitHub Pages and getting them used to that for their first set of sites. So for, I could say, probably their first 10 to 12 weeks, every homework, every page, every project they do is being deployed and GitHub Pages statically. And then we make the connection to them of the other tools later in the course. But we never actually get to come back and say, all right, you can launch here but when they get to their second or like end of class project, we have a lot of our students who end up deploying on Netlify or using like Firebase Hosting or even using Heroku and like static generating webpages and and just having it hosted via static folder. So some of the students end up deeper in Jamstack because of their own research, but they definitely get that hint of that throughout. course by talking about GitHub Pages and talking about what that means, and what Jamstack will be for them. Bryan Robinson 18:06 All right, well, so So let's talk about actual music now. What's your actual jam? Where are you listening to what's in your headphones on daily basis? Jayson J. Phillips 18:12 All right, so my favorite song of all time is Bootsy Collins, I Rather Be with You, there's just says something about that intro to I hear that anywhere I stop. And I just end up swaying slowly. As far as songs as I've been listening to you, like, for the last few months, is an artist by the name of Karen Harding, who had some, some really nice like Deep House hits, and one is called Say Something. And it's just a really kind of upbeat, quick, simple song that I hear it and it's like, Okay, I'm ready for the gym. Or I hear it and I'm ready for like, three hours of coding. Or I hear it and I'm like, Alright, 30 more minutes. I'll get on my live stream. Yeah, like it just it's my musical rebel. It's all I love that song. Bryan Robinson 18:59 So, so Also, you know, what are you - What are you looking to promote right now? What What do you want to get out to the Jamstack? community? You know, what, what are you doing that you want to get out there? Jayson J. Phillips 19:06 Yeah, I think first and foremost, which we're both members of, is the awesome media developer experts community. Yeah, we definitely want to make sure folks understand that they could join the discord even if they're not an expert, come join the community to talk about media, especially now that we are moving with heavy Jamstack and we're in that's gaining a lot of steam, that media handling and media expertise is going to be much more important because now image sizes matter when everything else on your page is code split and, and so much smaller. So now we need like a renewed focus on media. Jayson J. Phillips 19:40 The second thing is, you know, I've joined in toss my hat into the Twitch arena. I think for me, I'm sticking a gearing to towards really early stage to mid level engineering. So we'll talk about a lot of topics. I've been working on a movie Tracking site application just giving everyone a piece of functionality every week that we work on and on the stream. So that's been pretty awesome. So if you want to give a kid a follow up, come check it out. Jason J. Phillips, we'll make sure we give you some notes. But uh, yeah, that's, that's the things I've been up to recently that I've definitely want to get out there. Bryan Robinson 20:18 Very cool. I love the live streaming community. I've been a part of it for a couple months now. And it's just absolutely amazing. And I'm glad that you're a part of it. And I'm gonna go click that. That little heart button here in a couple minutes. Jayson J. Phillips 20:30 Yeah, definitely need to swing by, a few others, too. I've loved seeing the individuality amongst everyone. Yeah, when we're all talking about similar topics. It just makes that that ecosystem and that community so vibrant. And folks are so super supportive. It's like, if you're looking for like environments to to learn code, or to even stream code yourself, live streaming, especially on communities like Twitch and I think there's some fun Doing it on Mixer (editors note: Mixer just closed after recording) as well. It's, it's a good place to start and kind of get away from some of the toxicity you might see in other platforms. I don't doubt that it ends up on these platforms as well. But the communities right now are just so helping inclusive and like internally boosting each other, which is super dope. Bryan Robinson 21:19 I love it. Like there's so little judgment that happens. Like, I'm not always the best, like hardcore programmer and I've actually had chat debug my code for me, it was great. It was like a beautiful moment. Jayson J. Phillips 21:30 Yeah, I think the thing I love about that, is that, for my former students, I always model for them a lot that, you know, no matter how experienced you are, you're gonna make you're gonna make errors, you're gonna have bugs, right? The point is for us to kind of learn from those and not repeat it the same way. Right. And so, I do love that there's this freedom to just be yourself as an engineer on a live stream. Yeah. And, I mean, I've definitely had a moment where we were sitting in for 20 minutes trying to figure out why something wasn't working. And it literally was, I refer to the model in my code wrong. And I was like, Yeah, thanks. That's 20 minutes of me sweating and getting frustrated for no reason. Bryan Robinson 22:12 And there is sweat involved. It's it's it can be nerve-wracking in front of in front of a crowd. Jayson J. Phillips 22:17 Yeah, but it's a it's a it's a weird kind of scary freedom. or something. We're like, Jason, I don't get it. I'm like, I know. But there's just something also empowering when people do come in to chat. And you know, there's a message of support or a message of, hey, you missed something like just that. Automatic, like, leaving the house help is super awesome. Bryan Robinson 22:39 Yeah. And like, it's just like sitting in a room with you know, with other developers thinking through a problem it can be just super helpful just to talk to somebody about even that somebody can't talk back. Yeah, Jayson J. Phillips 22:49 and it's, and the community also isn't looking for like the super. Like wunderkind. I've been programming since I was two. So I never heard A bug in my C sharp, right? It's a lot of folks are just looking for folks who look like them or sound like them or have life experiences like them, and actually be able to see them writing code. And I think that's super empowering for all of us to play a role in. Because we don't know who were inspiring next, or who just needed that little bit of validation of, oh, Brian talked about his story. I will link to Brian's story. I could do this, right. And that that for me is like the, the main like, just thing that pulls me into education and into like, live streaming. Bryan Robinson 23:40 Yeah. Or like, Hey, you know, Bryan spent 20 minutes finding a typo in his code. I've done that like five times, maybe I am a programmer. Jayson J. Phillips 23:47 Or someone's like, Oh, I'm not a real programmer, but I'm building a tool to and this is a real thing that happened. I'm building a tool to screenshot my screen. Use OCR to look at my code. And then Tell me if there's better ways to write those functions. Like when you think you're not a real programmer, get out of here, you leave right now. Like, man, you should get on stream and I'm gonna follow you nervous now. Bryan Robinson 24:15 I'm not a programmer, but I wrote this entire thing that honestly, I couldn't do. So that's, that's super impressive. Jayson J. Phillips 24:21 Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's been amazing. So yeah. For folks out there, and especially in the Jamstack community, if you're looking to do that. Everybody's voices needed. You know, streamers, watch each other. People will watch each other stream. It's a super awesome thing. Bryan Robinson 24:36 Yeah, definitely. Cool. So I appreciate you taking the time to be on the show with us today and to share your thoughts and experience so keep doing amazing things on the web in the Jamstack. Jayson J. Phillips 24:44 Bryan, appreciate you. I love what you're doing here and thanks for having me on the show. Bryan Robinson 24:54 Hey, everyone, it's Bryan again. I want to thank Jason again for being on the show and I want to take a moment to thank you are listening community is one of the many things that makes the Jamstack shine. And you all keep me coming back week after week. Before we get to our sponsor, be sure to like part star favorite or whatever in your podcast app of choice, and spread the word about the amazing people doing awesome stuff in our community. And now for our sponsor, if you listen to season one you're probably aware of take shape by now. But as a reminder, take shape is a content platform for the Jamstack take shape has a headless content management system, easy to use GraphQL API, a static site generator and an amazing new product called match a service that can tie together multiple API's into their handy graph qL interface if you're doing anything with content on the Jamstack Be sure to check them out at takeshape.io/thatsmyjamstack. That's it for this week. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you back here for the next awesome episode. Transcribed by https://otter.ai Intro/outtro music by bensound.com Support That's my JAMstack by donating to their Tip Jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/thats-my-jamstack

Tune in to hear some of our takeaways and learnings from our CriticalSmiths Research Series. Also join a community committed to responsible, environmentally-sound practices for all facets of the Jewelry Industry. Follow on Instagram: CriticalSmiths: @criticalsmiths Ethical Metalsmiths Students: @EMstudents Lucy Derickson: @Lucyderickson Queensland College of Art: @qcagriffith  Dr. Elizabeth Shaw: @lizshawjewelleryobjects CriticalSmiths Research Series: https://ethicalmetalsmiths.org/criticalsmiths-research-series Learn More: https://www.wellnessformakers.com or Instagram: @wellnessformakers Music By: https://www.instagram.com/vacationlandmusic/

June 2020 Hello everyone. Welcome to my Metalsmith Arts 360 Podcasts. This is where you will learn to do filming while you are working in your studio, or maybe even livestream while you create your jewelry designs. Any which way these podcasts are going to help you to do whatever you need to do in whatever social media you use. While you design, create, and sell your jewelry. Join me Shoshana Kaliski and the Metalsmith Arts 360 podcasts. Get what you need to have an edge, as our earth re-opens from the worldwide shutdown. These are for all levels of Metalsmiths. So, whoever is out there in this massive market of jewelry fashion, come listen and share with your friends. Let’s build the rocking jewelry community that you have always wanted. Shoshana Kaliski

Fly Girl Fish welcomes Katie Cahn. Katie has such enthusiasm, sense of adventure and resilience, we loved having her share her experiences with us. Katie has been through some very challenging times in her life and it has always brought her back to the peace of Fly Fishing. We believe her journey will inspire you as much as it did us. Not only is Katie a talented guide and angler, she creates beautiful one of a kind jewelry, featured on her website Dirt Road Wares. Enjoy our podcast with Katie as she shares her story and also tells us about her best fishing buddy Beans! Guest: Katie Cahn Website: dirtroadwares.com Instagram: @katiecahn, @dirtroadwares         This is Fly Girl Fish episode 038, first aired on 06/03/2020.

In this episode Corey and Amelia talk with Margo Csipo, an illustrator and metalsmith with a passion for storytelling. Check her out on Instagram, @alwaysrelaxin, or on her website, https://margocsipo.com/.

I know I said the audio quality wasn't the best on this episode, but the original upload was actually unreasonably terrible - worse than I knew due to an uploading technical glitch. However, it's fixed now! Good learning for me for the future. On to this episode....Harlan Whitman is a jack of all trades and master of many. He is the founder of OOAK (One Of A Kind) Forge, which makes knives, slingshots, pizza slayers (Say whaaaat? You just have to see them - they're awesome), and is a venue where he dreams up new beautiful, functional and durable products built to last. Harlan's work outside of OOAK Forge has spanned media such as building and making furniture, instruments, jewelry, gravity bikes, large scale sculptures, swords, and he has helped create props, puppets and animatronics for massive events such as the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and for well known performing artists on stage. I sat down with Harlan to talk about what experiences have formed the way he approaches his art and his life as an artist. He shares about the differences between creating art for art’s sake and creating art to make a living, as well as what qualities young artists may want to focus on while moving forward with their careers in the current landscape of social media marketing and constant judgment from the haters and trolls. Check out Harlan's work on his instagram and webpage:https://www.instagram.com/ooakforge/https://www.ooakforge.com/More about the podcast on: www.thisnakedvoice.comSupport the show (https://paypal.me/JoeyCardella?locale.x=en_US)

How does one become a Master Metalsmith and create jewelry that has been worn by royalty (an African King) and celebrities such as Rihanna and Mary J. Blige as well as been placed in fashion mags around the globe? Nkrumah Jenning shares his inspiring journey with me in Episode 6 of the Fashion Industry Business & Career Show! We chat about business growth for an independent fashion brand, how to remain sharp and at the end of the video version of this insightful interview https://youtu.be/aw4-h4cIvQo he walks us through how to create one of his signature styles! Keep up with Anu Rock & Metal Jewelry at http://www.anurockmetal.net and follow them on IG at @anurockmetal. Please be sure to SUBSCRIBE AND SHARE this episode. Follow me at @theterinanicole on IG. Visit my blog at www.terinanicole.com for more fashion business insights, DIY projects and to view my work. Thanks for tuning in! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/terina-nicole-hill/support