"Why
copper? I thought you were a wire wrap artist!"
Gloria heard that a lot when wearing (or showing) her copper jewelry.
There's always something more you want to accomplish. She
learned wire wrapping way back in 2004, but since then she studied other
disciplines as well. It didn't take long to get the urge to move away from
wire and do some jewelry for which wire just wasn't a good foundation.
But why copper? Copper is so... common. Perhaps. But copper is
earthy. Copper is durable. And even though all metal prices
have gone sky-high, copper is relatively inexpensive, readily available,
and fun to work with!
This may be an oversimplification, but it's accurate: to work with wire,
you must learn to guide it, to finesse it, to coax it. With copper,
you can beat it. Fold it. Drill holes in it. Crush it.
Anneal it. And beat it again!
Gloria's love for wire wrap jewelry grew from her love of the beauty the
God puts into the rocks at our feet. Copper allows more of a focus
on form and mastery of the metal itself, rather than relying on its
natural beauty. So she felt her creativity expressed itself more
readily than with wire. Gloria could be impulsive, intricate, and wacky all in the same
piece.
Copper allows a jewelry artist
real license to let her imagination flow freely. Gloria's copper creations
were an opportunity to be close to her through the details in the copper.
She invested the entirety of her
skills in order to transform a hunk of metal into something beautiful.
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