Sisters

The Sister Cuffs. I made the first of this series as a birthday present to myself in the month of February. The idea to create a wide cuff with repeated wire lengths was an original idea to me, by that I mean the idea welled up out of my own mind, I didn’t see something like this in the jewelry world and set out to make something just like it. I didn’t believe the idea was original to the world of jewelry design, but it was original to me in the moment that the inspiration for it arrived. I’m going to come back to this concept in a moment. First, back to the cuff.

I set the first cuff, my birthday cuff, with a buttery cut of dendritic opal and have worn it on my wrist every day since. Now I feel a belongingness to it and I push it up and over my wrist bone every morning before I take on the day. If I forget to put it on, my arm feels bare and vulnerable and like there’s nothing to stop the wind from grabbing it and waving it around frantically like a weeping willow branch in the canyon breezes.

This design is clean, simple, bold and timeless. I made a few more and named the cuff series the “Sisters”. There’s something strong about this design, unwavering, and I like how the cuffs are all the same but different, just like real sisters are. These cuffs take a ton of weighted hammer work on the anvil (oy, my neck and shoulder!!!) and use up about 100grams of silver, each. Heavy! I used Kingman turquoise in these settings. Can you believe the range in color!?!!

After sharing an image of these cuffs on Instagram a friend of mine mentioned this image of Georgia O’Keefe to me and said that my cuffs were granddaughters of Georgia’s cuff. I thought that was so beautiful! What a wonderful example of a sort of sisterhood, across time and place and space. And heck, what great taste Georgia had!!!

Back to the idea I shared about originality. I never really set out to make something that the world has never seen before. I’m not sure such a thing is possible. But I do try to groom my inspiration, protect it a bit, and glean it directly from my own life experiences, from the environments I call home, from true aspects of my real life. I know that my work will overlap with other silversmiths — past, present, and future. I’m ok with that. It’s a beautiful thing to be on the same planet, genuinely sharing inspiration with others, and creating! What is most important to me is that when I do sit down to create that I can be as sure as possible that the idea I have is an idea that welled up out of me, and is thereby original to me. I’m really not a member of the online jewelry realm though I do have a few close friends who are silversmiths. I keep myself at a distance and I don’t allow myself to silently lurk. It’s a choice. It requires some discipline. I love to look at art. I have many friends who are painters, sculptors, writers, filmmakers…but I try to limit how much jewelry I look at, especially in online spaces. In point of fact, the only jewelry I spend time looking at is old stuff from other cultures, other ethnicities, other eras…and I prefer books and museums over the internet.

I’m just typing aloud now and am beginning to ramble but I supposed I mostly wanted to say that sometimes when I can tell that I have shared an honest inspiration with another artist, when I see an overlapping aesthetic that is true and natural, I just think to myself:

SISTER!!!

I suppose I wanted to mention all of this because I love the connections this design has formed for me between my work, Georgia, my own flesh and blood sisters (I have two and I really miss them), my girlfriends, all the women I love and cherish in my life who are strong, weighty, joyful, presences who tether my soul to the here and now in such beautiful ways.

I’ll be listing these cuffs in my shop at the end of March! Stay tuned for a day and time.