Unity

I make art to heal myself. With every object I create, I declare that I matter and claim my place in this world. I create to express vitality. It is how I participate with existence.

Unity Ring.
Handmade with fluorite and recycled sterling silver.
This Tuesday in my online shop.

Conduit

When I make a piece, I take direction from my gut. I determine the shape, size and texture based on what feels right in my body. 

When a piece is complete, I interpret it by asking who it is, and what it represents. In this way, each creation becomes a map into my subconcious mind. It tells me who I am and where I am going.

Conduit Ring.
Handmade with labradorite moonstone and recycled sterling silver.
Next week in my online shop.

Enchantment

Today, as I made this ring, I had a strange sensation: it was as if I could see myself from above, and what I was doing was not building an object, but combining elements from inside and beyond me to create a new form of energy. It was a sort of ritual that felt ancient, timeless and new. 

Enchantment ring.
Handmade with moonstone and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop. 

Ventricle

What a relief it is to not be divided within. To respond only to myself and to what I want, and not try to please others. I release stress, my heartstrings join together. This is freedom: the ability to notice to what I feel, and from there choose my way. 

Ventricle Ring.
Handmade with red tiger eye and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

Sacred Mountain

I grew up with a mountain at my back. It held my home like a hand. Its energy kind and caring, like a mother. Like the mother I needed to sleep at night. 

At the lake house, the mountain was enormous in her love, filled with creatures, buzzing with life. The stars above bringing her between the cosmos and my bed.

Here too is a forest that creates my corner. It protects me from the wild city. Here I am alone with the few residents of this tower. All in silence, calmed by the spirit of the mountain behind us. 

Sacred Mountain ring.
Handmade with labradorite and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

Open

When I feel cloudy and forget that life is good, I make a list of all the things I am grateful for. I soon realize that everything is much better than I thought. In fact, life outside my head is quite amazing!

Open ring.
Handmade with pink quartz and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

Sacred Tunnel

In an interview I was given years ago, I replied that in order to become an artist, I had to stop living my life through others. I meant it as a criticism to a weakness I perceived within me, but the truth was more complex. I lived my life through others because that’s how I coped as a child. I was a caretaker, I repressed my needs in order to care for other people. I became compliant and never angry, at least not towards others. This is how I received love.

The price I paid was a depression that nearly killed me. Now I am learning to listen to what I feel and let it be. Let anger be, allow sadness, allow joy. I am becoming more spacious inside. I am a wider container: ignoring less, enjoying more. I am less afraid of what I feel, because it is a healthy expression of who I am. I know now that I am complete with my anger, with sadness and fear. I don’t need to swallow anything down, I don’t have to toughen up and control outcomes to insure I get my needs met. This greater space inside feels like a greater connection to life.

I feel safe knowing that I will not ignore my own needs. I feel safe knowing that I will not put the needs of others above mine. There is a sadness behind this thought. There’s a scared girl inside me that has survived. She is still cold and tired. I guess this is what recovery means. To warm myself with kindness. 

Sacred Tunnel Ring.
Handmade with lapis lazuli and recycled sterling silver. 
Soon in my online shop.

Possibility

Sometimes I feel that what I do makes no sense in this busy world. I wonder if I should grow my business, make more money and secure my future. Perhaps art is a waste of time. Maybe I should choose profit over ideas and stop pondering life’s deeper questions.

This mind set paralyzes me, and is one of the reasons why I lead an isolated life. So that I don’t feel the rat race, so I can live in a make-believe world where creating is play and ideas come from a sense of openness.

Possibility ring.
Handmade with rutilated quartz and recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Magical

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Today I received a wonderful message from Maria, in Massachusetts: 

“You are a true magician, Jennifer, your work is powerful, spiritual and superbly crafted. Every time I know I'll have a difficult day, I wear something yours, and it makes me feel so much stronger, calmer, just better... I am so grateful that you are out there creating and making the world more beautiful.”

Thank you for continuing to enjoy my work! We create this magic together.

Magical Necklace.
Handmade with recycled sterling silver.
Next Tuesday in my online shop.

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Expansive

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I have a feeling that everything that has happened to me was orchestrated by me. Not with my full approval, but with the force of an expanding energy that just wants to be. An energy that cares nothing for social constructs, safety or reputation. A relentless desire for adventure and creation.

I am learning to trust this internal current, even when it feels self-destructive, because self-destruction can be positive. Especially when I break false ideas I have about myself, beliefs like I'm worthless or nobody cares. I am a force of nature, and I prefer to align with it than suffer its expansive and scary ways.

Expansion necklace.
Handmade with recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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Revelation

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Today I am excited! I’m remembering how I used to feel when I began making jewelry ages ago. The possibilities! The potential! The mystery and adventure! Anything can happen. I can create a world. I can participate. I have something to say, and as I say it, I create it. 

This is what I came to do. I came to create my world. I came to give birth to myself. My potential unfolds as I express who I am. Through writing, drawing, forging. It feels good to not avoid me. I am excited to be back on a great adventure with myself.

This is what it means to be a creator: to take what I was given, the good and bad and mold it into a story, into meaning into beauty. Beauty now being all of it, the whole of me. The depth lies in all of it, and how I’ve longed for it! I am the guide I always sought. The hidden wise crone.

On the other side of fear lies adventure. What a revelation for someone who was terrified of taking a step in any direction: on the other side of everything is something else. The next step appears after the one I take now.

Revelation necklace.
Handmade with recycled sterling silver.
Soon in my online shop.

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.