Inspiration and new designs

I was lucky enough to travel with my husband to Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany last summer. Our first stop was Vienna, the home of my favorite artist, Gustav Klimt. I finally got to see his famous painting The Kiss. As cliche as it seems sometimes (since it is reproduced so much) it was beautiful to behold. The textures mixed with the gold was more stunning than I could have imagined. If only I could make that into jewelry! One of my favorite jewelry designers, Alex Sepkus, must be influenced by Klimt. The texture and shapes in his work reminds me of a Klimt painting.

We went to see Klimt's Beethoven frieze which is a large mural he painted to celebrate Beethoven's 9th symphony. He was part of an art movement in Vienna called the Secession and this building was built for them to exhibit their work. I was fascinated by the decoration on the outside of the building. The top of it has a large gold globe made of leaves which is amazing, but I was drawn to the image you see at the top of this post. This year I made jewelry based on this floral texture and I am really happy with the way this suite of work turned out.

My New Kelowna Studio

I made the big move to Kelowna in April and have settled into the arts community here. I was lucky enough to meet two jewelry artists and together we applied for a studio at the Rotary Centre for the Arts in the Kelowna arts district. The studio was previously occupied by Janice Fingado, who is a silversmith that worked out of the Rotary Centre for four years. She has moved to Tucson, Arizona- she will be greatly missed here in Kelowna and we wish her the best of luck. We got the studio in August and with some hard work opened our doors in September. It's a great space that allows us to work and hold classes on jewelry making. I teach silversmithing, June Martens teaches chain making and precious metal clay, and Fay Wolfenden teaches glass bead and glass fusing. I couldn't have found better studio mates!