Uncommon Threads

I first picked up my grandmother’s crochet hook while taking a metal-smithing class in college. She had taught me to knit when I was a child, and I always had good feelings about the individual stitches that make up a larger whole. Immediately, crocheting silver to make wearable objects became my signature.

Through my technique, I explore formal artistic concepts such as line quality, pattern, composition, and form in jewelry. ‘Structure’ is a word with many meanings, and I get to explore many of them while I am in the studio. I have learned that I lean toward symmetrical, graphic patterns. And still, taking something as common to our lives as fabric and transforming it into something precious, via metal, is central to my work.

Fabricating creates the basis of any new piece. Drawings usually precede the actual commitment to building a new object, but when the fabrication begins anything can happen. I use different gauges of wire as different weights of line.

Adding crocheted silver to the framework I build allows me to create an organic or linear ‘skin’ for each piece. I get to choose whether to tell a soft story, or a hard one with the crocheted metal. Because the fine silver has a bright white look to it, it almost becomes an X-ray of a drawing.

Line quality, pattern, composition, and form tie me back to artistic tradition, as well as my family tradition. Both provide me with fertile sources for further exploration.