I Think I Love You!..Finding My Artistic Inspiration
Updated: May 9, 2022
Artists alway seem to be responding to the question 'what is your inspiration?'
I've envied those artisan jewelers who are so emphatic in passionately answering with responses like 'nature inspires me!,' 'the river that runs alongside my home!,' the architecture of the deco era, ancient Roman/Greeks, or the sleek lines of a skyscraper (do people still call tall buildings sky scrapers?)!
I wasn't that artist.
I started out with designs that more closely resembled the template or inspiration of a bevy of talented teachers there to train me in the basics of metal smithing and stone setting, yet subconsciously influencing my design oeuvre in the process.
Not surprisingly, my early works are now relegated to a box hidden far, far inside my workshop.
I didn't so much as declare my inspiration to myself as uncover, nee admit, it slowly.
In my world of artisan jewelry that revels in the use of precious metals like silver and gold and deeply saturated tourmalines, and rubies, and aquamarines, it seems almost blasphemous to admit my artistic inspiration.
Do you remember that puka shell choker necklace David Cassidy wore in the 70s cultural phenomenon (at least it was a phenomenon to my 11 year old surging hormones) The Partridge Family? Yep, that was the germ of my inspiration.
Not the necklace itself but since David was wearing it that's what I remember most. Instead, it was the saturated colors of everything from the family's bus, to the groovy clothes, to the big bold jewelry that said 1970s California cool.
As the decade rolled on and I aged into the teenage years, I adorned myself in clothes and jewelry that were sunshine, happiness and boldness incarnate. You couldn't miss me walking down the hallowed halls of high school in Massachusetts.
But it was in1977 when I stepped off a plane to the warmth, cloudless blue skies, and perpetually blooming flowers of Los Angeles that I understood the power of color. It was everywhere in a way I had never experienced.
To me, everything seemed brighter and somehow happier in the California sunshine.
I've likened that feeling of inspiration to Dorothy landing in beautiful Oz but maybe a truer metaphor may be that I finally got a ride down Pacific Coast Highway in that magical bus with Keith Partridge at the wheel.
And that feeling...the one of happiness and sunshine and color....is my undeniable artistic inspiration.
To check out some of the colorful statement rings created from this inspiration, click here