Why I Make Relics

I wrote "So I married a bartender, but all I really wanted was a cigarette," in college. That pretty much sums up my life's path.  

I have always been on the hunt for real.

An artisan medal in bronze is beautiful. But once that medal has been beloved, held, worn, and carried throughout someone’s life, it becomes something much more interesting to me. I’m interested in the stories these pieces hold.

The wear of a surface. The darkening of metal where it has been handled. A small dent or scratch that happened decades ago and stayed there. These things tell us that an object has had a life before it reached us.

That is what draws me to artifacts.

I’m less interested in objects that simply look old than I am in objects that have actually lived. Something passed from one person to another, carried on a journey, worn against the body, placed on a bedside table, or kept tucked away for years can hold a kind of presence that cannot be manufactured.

When I make something, I think about that future life.

I want the pieces I create to become more interesting with time—to collect marks, memories, and associations of their own. A piece of jewelry should eventually tell you something about the person who wore it, just as an old object can tell us something about the person who once owned it.

For me, making is part of that conversation.

I take inspiration from the things I find: old medals, worn metal, fragments, hardware, stones, pearls, leather, and objects whose original purpose may have been entirely different from the one I imagine for them now. I’m interested in what happens when these things are brought together and given another life.

The result is something between jewelry and artifact.

Something meant to be worn, held, used, and lived with.

Because I think the best objects are the ones that eventually become part of your story.

These pieces hold the stories, they have lived a life. 

And I married that bartender and we're still married ~