Tag: local jewelry

NOELLE HARRIGAN JEWELRY ARTIST

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I wear a lot of black. To me, it is the ultimate neutral. Black has provided a wonderful backdrop for some of the bold and inspiring neckwear that I have collected. Over the years, I began to wish to see something different.

Styles, stones, color, and I began to have a clear vision of what I wanted to have at my fingertips. So, that coupled with my passion for fashion accoutrement led me to the art of jewelry design. Creating jewelry has provided a means to showcase my style and aesthetic. As I collected beads and stones from amazing places and manipulated them into one-of-a-kind pieces. I had the realization that stones and the many tactile sensations they evoked had a truly profound effect on me.

Noelle Harrigan Philosophy

Surrounding myself in the magical, mystical world of beads and bead venues changed the way I looked at the world and it’s colors and textures. I work with stones that can evoke the memory of a sultry breeze on a warm night with someone you love.

Stones can feel like an electrical current in the air that energize your spirit. Some stones paired with the right counterpart look and feel like the beach when dawn breaks and again designed differently, like when the sun is setting. If I’m feeling particularly inspired, I can see a finished piece in my mind before I’ve put one stone or bead on the form. That’s when my love for what I do is at it’s most powerful.

LAURE GOLDBERG JEWELRY ARTIST

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Laure Goldberg started L’OR as a way to take her love of jewelry making more seriously. She began working with metals and stones seventeen years ago in the Wellesley, MA, public schools, but recently she turned her hobby into a business. She manufactures some pieces at her home workbench overlooking Beacon Street in Boston. As a studiomate at Metalwerx in Waltham, Laure Goldberg creates more labor-intensive pieces with specialty equipment and peer input.

Laure Goldeberg Philosophy

Whether walking around Boston, running an errand, or having trouble sleeping, Laure is constantly dreaming up new designs. Therefore, you will see quite a variety of styles, techniques, and textures in her work as she continues to experiment and play. Laure Goldberg also enjoys working one-on-one to design custom pieces with your own personal touch. Look for her new line of neckties coming out soon!

HELEN EDDY CARD ARTIST

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Helen Eddy began day*star, her card and gift manufacturing company, in 1980. She did so to market her artwork, and within a few years found her affinity for photography. She began selling her photographs into cards, magnets, and bookmarks, and other products throughout New England. Now her work is available as prints.

Light is of primary importance to photography; Helen Eddy (whose first name means “light”) here presents light to us in its virtues of beauty and truth.  She finds these virtues in love; that Helen loves Boston and that she loves flowers is evident in these images.  We may physically see richness and color, but the real element is known by spiritual illumination: love.

Seeing beauty in other places as well, Helen found a niche in photographing New England towns and going back to have gift stores in those towns carry her products.  She now has photographed over two hundred towns in New England, and has ranged as far as Italy and England.

Helen Eddy Background

Helen Eddy grew up in Enfield, Connecticut, and graduated with a degree in fine arts from Principia College, a liberal arts school near St. Louis, Missouri.  Before developing her line of photocards, Helen exercised her photographer’s eye for ten years at the Newton Camera Club, winning awards there and serving for a couple of years as its president.

PHILIP BOLDUC WOOD TURNING

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My name is Philip Bolduc, the creator of Bold Pens.  For many years I have crafted many items out of natural materials.

I earned my degree in Forestry and Wildlife Management from U.R.I. and I have been working as a laboratory technician since 1994.

Philip Bolduc Personal Statement

My main passion has been and continues to be the creation of useful natural and aesthetically pleasing items. Although the pen is the initial motivator of creativity for me in woodturning, there shall be other items crafted with the “Bold” name attached in the near future.

All of my pens and other items shall have a list of the materials used to create each item.

So, pick up a pen and get comfortable!

PATRICIA WELLENKAMP JEWELRY ARTIST

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Patricia Wellenkamp spent eleven years as the founding owner of a craft gallery in Somerville, Massachusetts. After that, Patricia Wellenkamp turned to her love of all things artisan. She made her goal jewelry and metalsmithing.
Background
She attended numerous classes at the Brookline Arts Center, The North Bennett Street School in Boston and the Haystack School of Crafts in Maine. She produces and sells her “Domed Flower” line of jewelry. Patricia Wellenkamp hand fabricates each piece from sterling silver and brass.

SYLVIA STEPHEN JEWELRY Artist

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Sylvia Stephen is a resident of Hingham and lives in Linden Ponds. Sylvia received a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Chile. She also studied with Linda Priest at School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Her Work
Sylvia Stephen creates jewelry in her studio in Waltham, MA. She fuses silver and little pieces of gold, and stampings. With this new technique and semiprecious stones, she forms rings and beads.

HIROSHI MINATO JEWELRY Artist

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Hiroshi Minato grew up in Tokyo and has been a resident of Somerville, Massachusetts since 2001. His endeavor to make jewelry began in 2013 to fulfill his personal needs. He wanted to have a necklace, which could match his outfit and life style. As a result, he decided to make it himself.

His Philosophy

After trying a few materials, he ended up choosing aluminum for his creation. His pieces are asymmetric, however, they are well balanced. They are simple, yet sophisticated. They convey a meaning that can have many interpretations. He thinks that the time and space around the pieces evoke unlimited imagination. He believes that the process makes his pieces unique.

Creative Process

Which are you more interested in?  Going to a museum to see paintings, or going to a studio to talk about the creative process? My answer might be the latter one. In fact, my art/design friends and I always enjoy talking about creative processes, not only because we can get a better understanding of our work, but also because we generate new ideas, processes, and designs for our artistic creations. I am a jewelry designer and am delighted to share my creative processes with you. I hope it will be helpful for your future artistic creations.

I use one of two processes in jewelry making. The first is to begin by generating a mental image, a design idea which exists before I ever pick up the materials. The second is to begin with no idea at all, allowing the design to unfold as I work. Let’s talk about the former. I cut a small piece from a roll of aluminum wire and form with it using pliers, a hammer, sandpaper and other tools, according to plan.  It’s based on a design idea in my brain. It’s relatively fast as long as the idea is solid. But, how do I come up with these ideas? In fact, design ideas come from almost every part of my life. Sometimes good ideas come about spontaneously while I’m busy with another activity, like swimming. At other times I search for clues in my environment and the objects that inhabit them, for example, historical buildings and Zen gardens. Observing the shapes in architectural and natural forms often works well for my jewelry. They are asymmetric, yet balanced, simple, yet sophisticated. The clues exist not only in sense of sight, but in sense of touch. Going to a fabric store to touch fabrics is a great way to get new ideas about texture, which then serve as tactile inspiration for my next piece.

The latter process is very different because neither a design nor an image is needed. That is, I just cut a piece of wire and then try to feel what the piece wants to be, following the flow. This process is slower and much more interactive. Each movement is an experiment, building upon the one that came before it. It’s very enjoyable. I feel it’s a meditation. I do not expect too much for my results, but more than half of my favorite pieces were created in this way. I do not know what is happening during this process. Scientists might figure it out one day.

After creating new pieces, either by design or creative experimentation, I wait a few days before I look at them again, in order to see them with fresh eyes and check if they suit my style. If they look unique without asserting their uniqueness directly, they are totally great. When I succeed I feel that my pieces create the time and space around them.

KRISTIN KNUDSON-GROH JEWELRY ARTIST

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In sixth grade, it was macramé necklaces and bracelets. In high school, I glued earring posts onto found objects. As an adult I moved on to beading, wirework and now chainmaille and metalwork. Growing up, I was the tomboy who loved pretty things. Now I take a form that had been used to equip men for war and use it to create pieces to enhance a woman’s beauty. Isn’t jewelry one of the ways that we ‘arm’ ourselves to face our days?

I’ve been working in jewelry “seriously” since 2005, making pieces. I began making chainmaille when a magazine project caught my eye and imagination. I had instructions, but still couldn’t make it work. Finally, I sat down and stared at the photo of the finished piece until suddenly, I got it. I saw how the pattern worked, how the rings related to each other. I was hooked. Every chain begins with a pile of rings, and two pair of pliers. I love the challenge of making armor look beautiful, and of finding ways to add beads onto (or into) the weaves. My goal is to push chainmaille beyond the Renaissance Festival, creating pieces that can be worn and appreciated by women everywhere.

JEWELRY STATEMENT

I start with the cabochon, playing with the colors until I like the way they swirl together. When it’s finished and glazed I create the chain, making it as tight a fit as I can to hold the cabochon snugly. Then I use a bit of clear epoxy on the back just to be sure that everything is secure. Finally I find a hand-dyed silk ribbon with colors that blend it all together. The cabochon is not quite 1 inch long. The silk tie is done with slip knots, so that it can be adjusted to the length you like. This necklace is very light and comfortable.

IAN HENDERSON JEWELRY Artist

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Ian Henderson grew up on a series of military bases around Europe, moving every few years as his father’s employment demanded. The bulk of those years were spent in Germany, where he attended an international school. It was in this diverse environment, surrounded by a broad range of nationalities and cultural backgrounds, however,  Ian failed to develop a normal sense of us, them, and other.

Unable to reconcile concepts such as social hierarchies, cruelty, or even sarcasm, Ian’s Americanization was swift and brutal. He emerged from adolescence with a distrust of groups, a passion for the obscure, and an enduring inability to differentiate the novel from the obvious. It is these traits that pushed him out of the Midwest and towards America’s eastern coastline.

After attending the Rhode Island School of Design and later MassArt in Boston, he waved on the precipice between calculated eccentricity and heroic perversion. His work represents an attempt to treat nebulous, passing, vision as Platonic Ideal. He brings it into manifestation through fierce application of technical virtuosity.

Currently, Ian maintains a studio in Waltham and occasionally teaches classes in silver casting and metalsmithing at various craft schools throughout Massachusetts.

About the Art

Inside all of us there are flickering moments folding into themselves. My task is to see them, hold them in mind, and take them seriously long enough that they can become tangible.

The images on this site are part of a body of work that uses shapes inspired by animal forms to explore the relationship between jewelry as signifiers of wealth, social status, or sexual attractiveness; and the animal plumes, crests, horns, and tails which serve similar functions in their respective kingdoms.

In these works, I have attempted to generate a tension between attraction and repulsion, the seductive and the dangerous. The objects are graceful, elegant, and constructed from exalted materials like gold and silver. They terminate into spines, blades, and interlocking plates of armor. In this way they ask to be touched, but warn us to do so cautiously.