Rings

Complex

Today I’m terrified. I spoke out yesterday and now, as I promised, I have to show up. I’d rather watch tv and chill out. Relax rest. This is too much exposure. Just like being in a relationship once was. Too exposed! I need to hide. Just like making love was once too much. Skin exposed, nerve endings awake. I need thicker skin. Teflon skin. Like cool people who navigate life with smoothness, reliable in their indifference. I feel too much!

There was a time in my life where I became very intuitive. Extra sensitive to what went on inside me, and I felt I could read people and heal them. It felt crazy on one hand, but true on another. I was wide open. I’d been meditating a lot, several hours a day for months, so perhaps my rational mind shut up and a sense of wholeness and connection took over. That time was awesome but also frightening. People came to me with deeper and darker issues. I tried to stay open and listen, because I know that attention heals, but I was not ready to go to dark places with them. I wanted shallow. TV junk food and less intensity. So little by little I closed up. 

Now I’m the one who has gone to dark places. I had to, in order to explore my depression. I had to contact my depressed self and see what her experience had been like growing up. Meeting her was dark and painful, and I hated every minute of it. Still, I went back because to survive I had to love the part of me that had lived in darkness. I had to love the shame, the hurt, the sadness and fury. 

The result is that I can be with myself longer without wanting to escape. I can also stay with others in their strangeness. I can pay attention to frailty and not want to make it stronger, I can observe lust and not cringe with what it desires. Some parts feel harder to love because they hurt more and seem to make me defective, but I stay with them as long as I can. This is what it means to be human, I guess. It’s messier than I thought.

Complex Ring.
Handmade with tourmaline quartz and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

Exposed

In this new year I want to show up as I am. I have been hiding from all of you behind quotes by other people and easy gimmicks that let me off the hook. But I want to become stronger and I know that the way to do that is to show up as I am now. Scared, terrified really, of showing up and sharing myself here with you. I grew up thinking it was not cool to be a woman, that my place in this world was to be the shadow of a man, because as a woman I had nothing of value to say or do. I believed real artists were men, and that I was to keep busy while I supported a man who did work that was important. So now, to prove my belief wrong and to straighten the path and speak my truth, I am here.

My name is J, or Jennifer -my given name- a name that has never felt like me because it is Anglo-Saxon and I don't really feel I come from one place in particular. It’s also name that feels girly and I never felt girly in any way. J feels universal in gender, place, culture and form. I am a strong woman. I am an open human being. I wear my emotions at the front of my body, and they guide my way as I interact with myself and others. I feel life. I feel it intensely and painfully at times. I grew up trying not to feel because half of my feelings were wrong, according to those around me. I grew up trying to be sweet and accommodating. I wanted to be cool and indifferent because I could see the imperfection in all of us. The pain in all of us, the division. And while everyone around me acted as if they were whole, I knew none of us were.

I have let myself break apart in the past few years. I have stopped acting as if I was all right because I wasn't. I was a ghost to myself. I was avoiding myself by trying not to feel what I felt, and trying to be accepted by others. I was crumbling inside because the strength and toughness that had been my banner was false. I was exhausted and I could no longer take care of everyone and act like I had it all figured it out. I could not take care of myself. I could not even care for myself. I was indifferent to my own story, my own pain.

I feel uncomfortable writing about me. Who am I to show up like this? Who even cares? The internet and the world seem to be all about having life figured out. But I don’t, and that’s ok. I definitely don't have it all together, and I don't care anymore. I feel freer now that there is space inside me. I am ambiguous and complex. I am hate and love. I am intolerance and compassion. I murder people in my mind and I also give my life for them. I have no idea what I am doing or where I am going, and for once, that’s ok. I am no one’s pillar, not even my own. I fall apart many times a day and that’s ok. I’m still here.

The hope I have recovered in this journey is that I am chaos and order. Disbelief and awareness. Ugly and kind. The life that comes through me has no shape or meaning, but it keeps me going and seems to choose. I am a girl and a woman, and a man and a daughter, and a wife and a monk and a murderer. I pray and I destroy. I seek connection and run away. I am inarticulate and smart. I create and I am nothing. I am God and a snail, and I meet you here again as me. I will try my best to not hide. 

Exposed ring.
Handmade with tourmaline quartz and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop. 

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Fountain Ring IV

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“That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Fountain ring IV.
Handmade with tourmaline quartz and recycled sterling silver.
Next week in my online shop.

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Fountain Ring III

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My truth springs from the darkest corners of my mind.

Fountain Ring III.
Handmade with tourmaline quartz and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Fountain Ring II

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Straight crystals prompt curly lines.

Fountain ring II.
Handmade with tourmaline quartz and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Fountain Ring

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To create this series, I play like a child with a water hose under the sun. I splatter and roll. Etch lines of hopscotch into the ground and claim my place upon this earth.

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Shop Update: Thorn Series

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The Thorn Series is now available in my online shop.

Please let me know what size you would like your ring when you make your purchase. Here’s help if you need to calculate your ring size.

If the piece you are looking for is no longer in the shop, it has already sold.

Happy weekend!

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Thorn Series

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Thank you for your warm welcome! Your encouragement always inspires me.

I am finally settled into my new home, happy to be back at play in my studio.

The Thorn Series combines my favorite gemstone (fluorite) color (agave green) and plant (the maguey, mother of mezcal). 

I will add this series to my online shop on Friday at 1 pm, CT.  

Things to know before then:

I can cut any ring to fit size 6 to 10. 

Once I cut your ring, you can still open it half a size.

I ship to most parts of the world. 

Shipping in my Etsy shop is free. 

Every piece I make is one of a kind and I don’t repeat it.

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Thorn

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I am strength and I am light. I am the beauty of the thorn and the sublime in pain. I am structure in chaos. I am a plant and I am a star. My insides cut and chop and rip out everything to grow and be reborn.

I am the cactus, I am the maguey. I am the deep well where everything rests. I am the void where life sprouts. I am the beginning and the end.

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Amber Rings

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I will add the Amber rings to my Etsy shop this Friday at 1 pm CST.
I can cut any ring to fit size 6 to 10. Once I cut your ring to fit you, you will still be able to open it half a size.

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Crystal Creature

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“It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.”
— David Attenborough

Crystal Creature ring.
Handmade with transparent quartz and recycled sterling silver.
Available this Thursday in my online shop.

(I can cut this ring to fit any size between 5 and 10.5).

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Planet Earth Ring V

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“Those who do not travel,
who do not read, who do not listen to music,
who do not find grace in themselves
die slowly.”
— Pablo Neruda

Planet Earth Ring V.
Handmade with recycled sterling silver and natural turquoise.
This Wednesday at 1 pm (CST) in my online shop.

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Planet Earth Ring IV

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“Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup
upon its branching stem-
save that it’s green and wooden-
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you.”
— William Carlos Williams

Planet Earth Ring IV.
Handmade with recycled sterling silver and natural turquoise.
Soon in my online shop.

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Planet Earth Ring III

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“I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.”
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Planet Earth Ring III.
Handmade with recycled sterling silver and natural turquoise.
Soon in my online shop.

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Planet Earth Ring II

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“The only transformer and alchemist that turns everything into gold is love. The only magic against death, aging, ordinary life, is love.”
— Anais Nin

Planet Earth Ring II.
Handmade with recycled sterling silver and natural turquoise.
Soon in my online shop.