Variety is the Spice...

I am one of those people who appreciates the seasons. I like the idea of 70 degree weather and low humidity all year long, but in reality, California would just make me lose track of time (even more!) So though I do not appreciate the current high temperatures and cloying humidity that have blanketed the East Coast of the United States, I do love that the weather changes.

As a jewelry designer, I love taking a concept and working it in new directions. Our designs have seasons. They develop and change over time: we just love juicy color combinations and we keep playing with new ones. Some combinations are moody, some are happy, some are sophisticated and some are positively regal.

We are about to launch our re-vamped website so stay tuned for more images of our new directions, coming soon!

Contemporary Jewelry Design Group Appointment

I am a jewelry designer and a big fan of the jewelers who work around me. We know each other from exhibiting at the trade shows in Las Vegas, New York, Philadelphia, Anaheim, Tucson and elsewhere. We all use the same paint and canvas -- gemstones and metal -- but we have each developed our own language of symbols.

Creating jewelry is an art form and we all see the world through a different lens. Jewelry artists give the gift of their particular creativity, their aesthetic, to every object that they bring into existence. Jewelry is portable, wearable sculpture that elicits feelings of delight in the viewer and in those who wear it.

I am honored and humbled by my recent appointment to become the next president of The Contemporary Jewelry Design Group. I very much look forward to engaging with my fellow designers to increase their visibility among the jewelry-loving public.

I have been working with Marylouise Lugosch, Executive Director of the CJDG, to re-shape the vision for the group as we head into the digital age. To that end we have re-designed the CJDG website, working to make it a destination for those who love jewelry. It is a growing repository of designer profiles, stories of inspiration, gorgeous images, shopping guides, and observations on new directions in jewelry. We hope to inspire our visitors to find out more about each of the CJDG designers and their work. I am very much looking forward to working with the new board -- Vicente Agor, John Petet and Mark Schneider to expand the reach of this terrific group of designers.

The Contemporary Jewelry Design Group was founded in 1989.

Squaring the Circle

The Quattro was originally designed as an exploration of the relationship between squares and circles. While examining this topic, I came across the expression "squaring the circle." It is a reference to an impossible mathematical problem that involves finding the area of a square and a circle and having them be equal. It is an unsolvable problem because the value of pi is indefinite. So, it turns out that the expression "squaring the circle" is a metaphor for doing something logically or intuitively impossible.

I liked the metaphor. When I worked in the film industry, it seemed we were always trying to do the impossible -- shut down the Brooklyn Bridge in the middle of the day, fly a helicopter to pick up a singer off of a small island in the East River in the middle of the night, stop traffic in the middle of Times Square.

We were often told by the NYC Mayor's Office of Film & Television that we could not do what we wanted. And then we had to come up with a way around it. We shot the scene on the Brooklyn Bridge at 4:00 in the morning (and changed the script accordingly). We found the best helicopter pilot, Al Cerullo, in NYC who the Mayor's office would allow to pick up a person on an island in the middle of the East River. (It was said that Al could hover an inch above an egg in high winds and not crack it.) We went ahead and stopped traffic in Times Square but just for very short periods of time, 15-30 seconds, and then cut the sequences together to make the scene appear seamless.

Working in the film industry taught me that what you think is impossible, is not necessarily unachievable, you just have to come up with another way to do it. And in the end, the Quattro, can be a reminder that the seemingly impossible is often highly possible.

Both pendants pictured above are available at Max's in Minneapolis.

Inspiration Express

Recently, I was able to take a long Friday lunch with friends and wine in a dark, wood-paneled bar. One friend asked me where I found my inspiration for my jewelry design. Before I had a chance to respond, she said that her mother, who was a lifelong potter, had believed that everything and anything can be inspiration. I agree wholeheartedly.

Permitting curiosity to be your guide, anything can be questioned, expanded, combined, reversed or put to other uses to bring a new idea into being. Michael Michalko wrote a couple of great books on the subject of invention. Cracking Creativity is a particularly good read.

But sometimes, inspiration just does not seem to come. Sometimes you have to wait for the muse to show up. I recently heard a talk on TED.com where Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love quoted an older poet saying, that inspiration can 'barrel through you like a train while you try to catch the tail end of it, frantically looking for a piece of paper and a pen.' And if you can't get to a pen, if you miss it, the train will just streak on to someone else who can capture it and bring the idea into being. This talk on TED.com is illuminating and heartwarming and decidedly worth viewing.

When ideas are ready to be born, they look for capable midwives, ready with pen, paper, clay, computer, precious metal or stones, who are willing to persist in the work of honing the notion into a fully formed creation. This is a job I love doing.