10 years

It's been 10 years since I moved to Oceanside, CA to go to the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad, CA. I can't believe it's been that long. This is significant to me because I feel that GIA was the start of my professional career. I had been working in metal since Aug. 1996, but it was more of a hobby before I went to GIA.

While I was there I took, in this order, the graduate jeweler (GJ) course, wax carving, graduate gemologist (GG), jewelry design, and a short advanced stone setting class.

GJ class, spring 2000:


In the GJ class and wax carving class everyone makes the same thing. So I didn't make any of my own designs during the GJ class. I was able to do some of my own waxes during the wax carving class because I finished many of the assigned pieces quickly.

Here's one of my own designs I carved in 2000 during my wax carving class:


I didn't cast it till a couple years later, but the wax was finished in 2000.

We did our own designs in the jewelry design class. Below are some watercolor renderings I did in that class in spring 2001:

My first piece, for real this time.

A while back I posted the first piece of metal work I did in 1996. Well I forgot that I actually did a piece long before that. I made this wire cat out of galvanized steel wire and soft solder around 1984 I think, when I was probably 9 years old. It's about 8.5" x 9.5".

I scanned this on my scanner that's why it's such a poor image, and it was slightly too big for the scanner.

older work

I thought I would post these photos of a ring I made in 2002 or 2003. I just photographed this ring a couple weeks ago to enter in Lark Books 500 Gem and Stone Jewels book. It is cast silver, the green stone is chrysoprase, the orange stones are carnelian.

This ring is pretty typical of a lot of the designs I was working on when I lived in San Diego (1999-2004). I used to carve a lot of wax, mostly rings. Eventually I got sick of these kinds of rings because they have straight sides and can't be sized without changing the shape of them.




More rings I was working on 2003. I think 2 of these are sitting in a box still unfinished.



I used to love carving wax. One of the other reasons I carved wax was because I didn't have a lot of tools and you don't need much to carve wax. I was also living in an apartment, so I couldn't make a lot of noise. When I moved to Iowa to go to grad school in 2005 I pretty much totally stopped carving wax because I had access to a large studio and wanted to take advantage of it.



Carving a wax in my apartment in Oceanside, CA. Sept 2003.

My first piece

I thought I would post a photo of the first piece I made in metal. It's a spoon. I made it fall semester 1996 in the beginning jewelry and metalsmithing class at the University of Iowa. Its aluminum with brass rivets. I remember I considered anodizing it, but decided not to cause it seemed most people got pretty poor results.