Joan North
Metalsmith/jewelry
Stevens Point, WI
About the artist
Being an artist is as much a calling as it is an obsession. You can’t help yourself. It just feels good to make something new and beautiful. The fact that people enjoy what you make is icing on the cake. Writing about it is harder. Let’s try a metaphor: the marriage of stone and metal to create jewelry.
I have focused lately on incorporating stones into my jewelry, no small step in my own evolution. Someone digs up the earth to find the rocks. A lapidary cuts and polishes them into colorful beauties. Whether you use stone cabochons (polished oval-topped stones with flat backs) or faceted stones (artfully cut tops with pointed bottoms), the stones are then tamed by metal to stay in place. This is not a marriage that flows smoothly in one step. You study a stone, trying to imagine what kind of marriage is about to occur? You sketch, doodle, sift around the materials on the desk. You decide if you will put a bezel around its bottom or prongs on its top to tame the connection.
From there you shift your attention to the future partner-the metal. You mold the metal so that it fits and enhances the lovely waiting stone. You measure, cut, pattern, hammer, stamp, sand, stretch, flux, solder, pickle, smooth, tumble and polish the metal to prepare it for the bride. That lovely stone just sits there waiting, looking beautiful, while the metal does all the work to make the partnership work. I will let that picture tickle your imagination.
If all goes well, they live long and well together.
I have focused lately on incorporating stones into my jewelry, no small step in my own evolution. Someone digs up the earth to find the rocks. A lapidary cuts and polishes them into colorful beauties. Whether you use stone cabochons (polished oval-topped stones with flat backs) or faceted stones (artfully cut tops with pointed bottoms), the stones are then tamed by metal to stay in place. This is not a marriage that flows smoothly in one step. You study a stone, trying to imagine what kind of marriage is about to occur? You sketch, doodle, sift around the materials on the desk. You decide if you will put a bezel around its bottom or prongs on its top to tame the connection.
From there you shift your attention to the future partner-the metal. You mold the metal so that it fits and enhances the lovely waiting stone. You measure, cut, pattern, hammer, stamp, sand, stretch, flux, solder, pickle, smooth, tumble and polish the metal to prepare it for the bride. That lovely stone just sits there waiting, looking beautiful, while the metal does all the work to make the partnership work. I will let that picture tickle your imagination.
If all goes well, they live long and well together.
