Anasazi Mosaic Wire Sculpted Necklace

I recently received my spring 2008 copy of Step by Step Wire Jewelry, and I was ecstatic to discover that a picture of one of my pieces was in the “Wire Works” gallery of unique designs. I love this magazine and I’ve learned so much reading it, so this is a real honor.

I was especially happy since March marks the first anniversary of the first lesson I took in wire-wrapping at UNM Continuing Education from Camille Argeanas of Creative Wire. Camille has a no-nonsense approach, but what I appreciate about her is that once she teaches the basics (which are essential) she allows her students to explore their own ideas rather than just copying things she’s done. 

Here’s a picture of my piece in Step by Step Wire Jewelry.

The pottery shards are authentic, a thousand years old, and found on our private land. The black obsidian arrowhead was flaked by my dad, and the wrapping is done in sterling silver embellished with brecciated jasper bear fetish beads, turquoise beads, sterling silver beads, black onyx beads and red jasper chip beads. This piece is currently for sale at Oso Arts Gallery in Capitan, NM.

This was a very challenging piece for me, and I wasn’t quite sure my vision of it, based on my initial conception, would turn out the way I planned. I think that’s true for any piece of art, and this piece definitely had a long-lasting ”ugly stage.” With some pieces of jewelry, I just start working and see what happens, but with this piece, because it was so detailed, I started with a plan. As a creative person, sometimes it helps me see how others work, so here are some pictures I took of this piece at different stages.

So far so good. Nice and clean. After I had placed the pottery in a pleasing arrangement with the arrowhead and the 12-gauge sterling silver wire I planned to use as the support for my wrapping, I traced the outlines of the shards and the arrowhead on the paper so I wouldn’t forget where they were supposed to go, and also so I’d know where I wanted to place my wraps. From here it looked a whole lot worse before it started looking better.

After I had done the initial wrapping of the pottery shards and the arrowhead, I attached them to the 12-gauge sterling silver wire I had shaped into a curve. I’m not sure how many feet of sterling silver wire I had used in this piece by this time, but each shard is wrapped in at least three feet of wire. So of course the next question became-what do I do with all those wiry “whiskers” sticking out everywhere? I really had no idea yet, so I just kept going. At this point I had too much silver invested to quit.

I decided it was missing something, so I added a couple more shards on each side of the arrowhead. And I just kept going from here. I don’t have any more pictures until the piece was completed, but some of the wire whiskers I embellished with beads, others I decorated with weaving using very small 26-gauge wire. At this point it was pretty heavy, and very unwieldy, so my primary goal was to keep weaving and sculpt the wires so that the whole piece was stable and the pieces didn’t easily shift places; I knew any future customer who paid what I would have to ask for this piece would not be happy if it shifted or started “unraveling.”

What I learned about the creative process from this piece is that sometimes it’s okay if it’s ugly for a long time before it’s finished. Just keep going, keep trusting those creative instincts, and understand that the initial vision may not exactly match what you end up with, but that’s okay. That’s part of what people love about art of any kind. I also learned that sometimes even pieces that feel beyond your experience level may not be as long as you have a solid grasp of the basics and have patience and faith in your internal vision. And sometimes doing things that “scare” you is a great way to grow.