Family Lore & Creating a Personal Collection

Disclaimer : My ideas, thoughts, proposals are subject to change in the future and become something else entirely. I am constantly shifting through my creativity as things develop within me and to adjust to worldly situations. My goal is to always be mindful about what I create in the moment.

Last year, I started to get the feeling that I needed a shift with my jewelry. This feeling of discontentment was settling in and I wanted to take a break from what I was making to explore a new path.

When my dad passed away, the first words that came to me were, "I don't want to make jewelry anymore." That's a loaded thought and I had to sit down with it to really uncover what it was about jewelry that I wasn't enjoying anymore.

While my dad was hospitalized, I moved back home with the idea of helping to take care of him. When I was packing my belongings, I looked carefully through my personal collection of jewelry and many of the pieces were inherited, given to me as gifts, or were pieces from my younger years. The truth is that nothing really spoke to me.

A few thoughts came to me:

• It's not that I don't want to stop creating jewelry, I actually don't want to create jewelry for commercial purposes right now.

• What happens when you make your art just for yourself? What does that shift look like?

• Most often, artists feel a need to justify their creative pursuits by selling their work. What if this brings up the conversation of creating purely for yourself, kind of like Frida Kahlo. She painted to understand her own pain, and yet so many relate to her work.

• What if I created my dream jewelry collection? What would that look like?

As I was journaling, connecting these thoughts, I had the idea to create a collection that could specifically be passed down to my daughter. My grandfather used to be a prolific writer and author. When I was in my 20s, I read through his journals, letters and publications and they had a profound effect on how I wanted to leave behind a legacy of some sort.

Which is what brought me to jewelry. I wanted to make something with my hands that could be the positive impact and be the 'thing' that outlives me, the thing I leave behind.

As I was packing up my jewelry for the move, I watched my daughter look carefully through each piece and how her eyes lit up.

The idea for this next body of work is to create pieces that hold my own stories, my family's stories, and to write about each piece. Some will just be everyday items, things I've always wanted to make for myself, others will be specifically about a moment in my life or something I want to remember and share with my daughter when I'm gone.

I have this idea to make a collection, have a stack of writings to go with each piece and eventually make this beautiful box designed just for this collection. When you open it, you'll feel like you're opening a treasure box, but instead it belongs to your mother and she's sharing this part of her life with you. Each piece is an extension of my personality, identity, upbringing, the stories I want to impart with her.

To start this collection, I sat down recently to make a garnet ring for myself. It was the push I needed to get back into the studio. In another blog post, I will write more about "It Started With a Garnet Ring."

For now, take care and thank you for reading.

Caitlin