I'm confessing here that when I am looking at jewelry at an art fair I have rarely thought to myself, "I wonder how this was made?" As a buyer you may be looking at the style, the intricacy, the inlay, the gems, the color, thinking how it will match an outfit, justifying one more pair of earrings, wondering if the artist will let you make payments, etc. Right?
This month's featured artist is jeweler, Carla Fox, who is a metalsmith, constructing wearable art from various metals using heavy machinery and chemical processes. It gives one pause and elevates "jewelry making" from "pretty nice work" to "amazing!"
Carla grew up with talented parents who were both handworkers; she took those skills to her first art, soft sculpture. This turned into a business of making large scale fabric & metal art banners for commercial buildings. The metal banners downsized when she discovered precious metals and her love of making small sculpture---jewelry.
Until I studied Carla Fox's jewelry pieces I never thought about how jewelry was made. Visiting her website and seeing the amazing machines I have a new respect for this art. Did you know that in jewelry fabrication, millimeters matter and degrees make all the difference?
As a result Carla says, "I have become part artist, part scientist - perfecting my craft through trial and error, creative thinking, and dogged problem solving. Every finished piece of jewelry is built from many smaller pieces of metal. Gold, bi-metals, silver, and copper sheets are cut, hammered, filed and soldered. They go from 2-dimensional building blocks to 3-dimensional forms."
About her jewelry she says, "Jewelry says something about the person wearing it ... if I'm doing my job designing you will see jewelry you've never ever seen before."
Meet Carla and see her metalwork in June at the
Des Moines Art Festival, June 24-26.
Learn more about Carla and her work:
www.ArtFairCalendar.com/featuredartist
Enjoy this YouTube.com video of Carla in her studio:
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