Alexandra Amaro Lifestyle Photoshoot

Jewelry: Alexandra Amaro
Styling: Alexandra Amaro
Photography: Alexandra Amaro
Models: Bárbara Albuquerque and Inês Carijó
Hair and Makeup: Bárbara Albuquerque and Inês Carijó
shot on location in Point Richmond

Trade Bead and Raw Diamond Cocktail Rings

Companion cocktail rings with Mozambique Island trade beads, raw diamond, 14k rose gold, sterling silver.

Marrying the Designer with the Traveler

Carved coral earrings from the Italian side of my family, remixed with antique trade bead tubes found at Mozambique Island. 14k and 10k gold hardware.

I've been working hard over the past few days to update my Alexandra Amaro jewelry website. I am trying to bridge the gap between what I am making in art school for my senior thesis and the work that I make otherwise. Check out the progress here.

For a long time I've felt like I have two distinct jewelry styles: "designer Ali" and "worldly Ali".

The first is clean, almost minimalist organic geometry. It's what happens when I sit down and sketch out a plan for a piece. "Designer Ali" is commercial, appealing to a wide audience, easy to wear. It is also, in the words of many a professor and peer at CCA, "safe work." Safe work isn't necessarily bad, but it isn't innovative or especially outstanding.

My other style, "worldly Ali," has its roots in what I loved making in Mozambique: fusion work that brings together various antique, ethnic, travel-inspired elements in a high-touch presentation. I've refined that look, and I love it. But it's very different from "designer Ali."

I often think that if you put the two categories of work side by side, nobody would ever believe that the same artist made them. On a certain level, this has always bothered me. I've long wanted to reconcile these two parts of my creative self, to marry them and create a hybrid offspring. With each new piece I make for my senior project, I believe I am coming closer.

The big question I am asked these days is, "So what are you going to do once you graduate?"

Honestly, I don't know. I have lots of ideas, I can see several viable paths to follow, but I don't really know what I want in terms of a grand strategy.

I know a few things, though:

- I want to continue working in the style of my senior thesis work. "Origins and Routes" is the kind of work I've always dreamed of doing. I find it highly fulfilling, exciting, and motivating (even when it's frustrating). I love working with materials from distant places and times. I am obsessed with where things came from, who used to own them, what path they traveled to reach me. I like telling stories about identity and place through materials. This style of cultural re-mix work speaks to me in a major way, and I feel that I should keep doing it, even if it's not immediately obvious who would buy it or where I would sell it successfully.

- I don't enjoy making the same thing twice. Yes, this will improve once I get an assistant and don't have to do 100% of the grunt work (e.g. filing, sanding, polishing, cutting) associated with metalsmithing. However, it's a fact that I am a one-of-a-kind girl. That said, I know that being able to work in some sort of production model is helpful (necessary, even). I believe the solution is to work in series, but the details are still becoming clear.

- I want to make things that nobody else could make. Us metalsmiths are a pretty versatile lot. We have mad skills, and once we are trained we can work in essentially any style, making any kind of piece. I could make a Tiffany-style solitaire engagement ring just as readily as I could make a necklace out of found objects and melted plastic. So it comes down to a unique vision. I believe my Origins and Routes work is on the right path here, too. Yes, technically others could assemble or form these pieces, but nobody will ever have the same vision I do when it comes to the cultural mash-up.

- I don't want to grow to hate being a jeweler. I know it's a possibility, that burn-out is hugely common especially when acting as a one woman operation. But I really, really, really want to avoid it. I also don't want my hands to crap out on me. I have problems with tendonitis and fatigue and pain, but it's manageable as long as I don't abuse my body with long hours and horribly repetitive tasks.

Other than that, it's pretty much up in the air. I have faith that as graduation draws closer, answers will become more obvious. Until then, I will continue to prepare as much as possible for that elusive next step. Website updates, photo shoots, business plan brainstorming, gallery and boutique scouting, and everything else that seems of use no matter which path I decide to follow.

Invitation Time

Send me a message with your mailing address if you'd like an invitation to my senior thesis show, Origins and Routes, at the California College of the Arts.

The show will be April 28-May 5 in Oakland, with the opening reception on the evening of May 1.

Hope to see you there!

Carved Coral + Trade Bead Earrings

Worn and weathered, these materials tell the story of where I am from, the paths I have traveled, and the places I call home. Objects collected during childhood, inherited from family, and found while living abroad play a central role. The connections between them become apparent as they are grouped, rearranged, and remixed to become wearable compositions. The ensuing pieces speak to a hybrid identity, the result of forming ties to geographies and cultures that are not our “own” by birth or blood, yet shape us just the same.

Oh, and I just came up with the title of my senior show

Origins and Routes.

It feels good, I think it sums up what this work is really about.

Red and Blue Sculptural Trade Bead Jewelry

Here is a preview of my latest work for senior project.

I am using up my Ilha de Moçambique trade bead collection and making large, dimensional necklaces and bracelets. Each piece is woven with multiple yards of silver wire. I'm happy that my thesis work is turning out to be fun and colorful.

I find it ironic, however, that this is basically the same work I was doing pre-CCA (technically speaking at least). Trade beads and wire wrapping. Of course it's totally different, too.

I would have been incapable of making these pieces four years ago, not because of a lack of soldering or stone setting skills, but because my perspective has shifted so hugely. My eye has changed, my intention has changed, my sense of composition and balance has been sharpened.

This is why I wanted to go to art school as opposed to a trade college (there is a world class jewelry school here in the Bay Area, the Revere Academy, that would have been a valid but different option for going about my career change). At CCA I have been pushed and questioned and encouraged and criticized in a way I doubt would have happened at a trade school. I have had a major breakdown, many smaller crises, a handful of breakthroughs, and one gigantic "aha" moment. The entire experience has changed me as a person, for sure.

The process of working with old beads and wire is the same as it always has been: stringing, wrapping, tightening, forming. But the result is totally different, as is how I feel about the work.

2013 and a Graduation

The next five months will be very intense. It's (finally) my last semester at California College of the Arts and I will not only graduate with a BFA in May, I will be putting on my very first individual gallery show. Our senior thesis takes the form of a body of work that we must create, contextualize, install, illuminate, and present to the world. It will be on view for one week, with the opening reception May 1st. I am very excited but also anxious because an awful lot of work remains to be done.

In order to get through it all with a semblance of balance, these are my goals:

1. Exercise a minimum of four times per week. This is my main focus, for it seems if I manage to stay on top of this fitness goal, the rest falls into place quite naturally. I easily maintained this rhythm last semester and hope to do it again. What works for me is a combination of dance classes, personal training, and running with Team Flux (friends from school) and Rico.

2. Go with, not against, my natural biorhythms. I am neither a night owl nor a morning person. I like to go to bed around 11 and wake up between 7:30 and 8:30 (I need a lot of sleep to feel decent). I feel most inclined to exercise in the mid-morning and like to work in my studio in the afternoon and evening. I like to wind down the day by cooking a nice dinner followed by tv. If I have to pull an all-nighter, I can, but it makes me feel horrid for several days after. A better strategy, it seems, is to try and wake up at 4am to get work done if I am in a pinch. But really, slow and steady is by far the best way for me to approach things so I don't even have to contemplate a really late night or an unfortunately early morning.

3. Maintain systems of organization at home and in my studio to avoid the all-dreaded clutter takeover. I feel like I am eternally organizing, re-organizing, purchasing what I realize is missing, and donating what has overstayed its welcome. Part of my mission is motivated by efficiency. I love knowing where things go, the time saved when you don't have to search for a particular tool or winter hat, the daily annoyance avoided when surfaces are clutter-free and functional. Part of it, though, is totally therapeutic. I love the act of organizing and categorizing. It is definitely self-soothing, like if I can get a handle on the chaos inside my kitchen drawers everything else will be okay, too.

My favorite thing to organize is my closet. I think I redo it probably every two weeks, usually on Thursdays for some reason. I have different "filters" I apply to my clothes: sometimes I categorize by item type (e.g. sweaters, tank tops, skirts), other times it is by season, by color, or by function (formal wear vs. "creative professional" outfits vs. studio clothes. I even like to organize other people's closets, and have done my mom's, Rico's and Babi's (a dancer/friend from Brazil who is staying with us for a few months while she finishes a training program at the Alonso King LINES Ballet in San Francisco).

4. Spend time alone. Spend time with girlfriends. Spend time with Rico, just the two of us. Spend time with my mom. Spend time with the cats.

5. Believe unwaveringly that my senior show will come together in a way that makes me proud. Work at least three days per week in my studio, if not four once the holidays are over. Don't worry too much about scheduling and planning my creative work, just show up and commit to doing work in whatever form is flowing that particular day. It's like my favorite saying about gardening: What's the best thing to put on your garden to make it lush and beautiful? Your shadow.

6. Take vacations. I have to put them in my calendar months in advance to avoid the temptation to just keep working. But it's very important for me to rest my hands (tendonitis is a close companion, unfortunately) as well as my mind. I already have one penciled in for the week after I graduate. :)

Holiday Food, NM Style

Strangely I think this will be delicious. My hands just startedd grabbing at spices.

Butternut squash with sea salt, brown sugar, New Mexico red chile powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. And I think I'll glaze it with tangerine juice as it roasts.

Xmas eve dinner we will have posole and tortillas at my mom's, and I am making flan/pudim de leite.

Holiday food for a Burquena for sure.

Improvisation

Click here to read about the major shift that has happened for me over the last 4 months regarding how I work as a jeweler, metalsmith and artist.

It's an exciting time for me, a relief really, because being stuck (creatively or otherwise) is tedious and no fun.

Hope you all are having a good end of year. My best friend is coming to visit and we are going to do luminarias. New Mexico traditions die hard. :)

Still Life with Blackwood Sculpture and Grapefruit

Alexandra Amaro Online Shop Has Launched!

My online shop has finally launched!!!!! I am so excited to share this with you, it's been a tremendous amount of work (and of course there is still work to be done) but we are live and it feels so very good.

Paypal is the only checkout option right now, direct cc processing will be up and running next week. 

Check it out at http://store.alexandraamaro.com/

Chromophore Collection

Pojagi-Inspired Textiles

Our first assignment in the Printing, Dyeing, Painting textiles class I'm taking at school was to make a pojagi-inspired piece (pojagi is a type of Korean textile used as a wrapping cloth, traditionally made in patchwork style out of silk organza).

The panels I made were created through a multi-step process: silk degumming with clamp resist, light indigo bath, tied resist with tiny rubber bands, dyeing in a deep rust color, tied resist, discharge of color using theox. The final result was incredible, especially when the discharge solution took the warm rust color to a teal hue and then a light green. Some of the panels remind me of aerial maps.

To finish the project, I stitched the seams using a flat-felled technique so that they lay flat and the piece is essentially reversible. I am so glad I learned to sew over the summer. It makes textile work so much more gratifying because I can make exciting final pieces instead of just having many beautifully dyed and printed raw pieces of cloth. These particular pieces became scarves and were gifted to some lovely ladies in my life.

Body of Work

I have to apply for a big fellowship, as required by our department at school. There is a huge amount of work that goes into these proposals, and even if I'm not chosen it's still been useful to get work finished, photographed, edited and titled.

Here is the body of work I'm submitting. I'm really pleased with how it's all coming together.

Seven Years and Still Going

I just read through the October entries of my blog archives from 2005 to present. Some of the posts I remember writing, and the moments described therewith are clear as day. Chimoio. Pria and Parceiro. Hugh Marlboro. Others I don't recall at all, and it's as if I were snooping through someone else's diary and life.

A lot has happened in the past seven years. I am glad I kept a written record of it, even if incomplete or edited for public consumption. Similarly I am happy I started writing paper journals when I went for my student exchange to Brazil in 1997/98. I wrote diligently every single day that year, a perfect record of events and feelings and adventures. I kept writing afterwards, filling volume after volume of blank-page books well after I'd graduated college. I have them all, stored in my desk shelves, waiting for the day when I have time to digitize the years and years of words.

I like to read my old journals, to look at how my handwriting has changed (or not, as it is the case), to remember the specific pens I used, how I had mastered the art of writing in a straight line while on a bus through the back roads of northeastern Brazil. I also enjoy reading my blog archives, but there is something about tangible paper and ink that makes the digital journal seem lacking.

Regardless, I feel satisfied in realizing that I've blogged over 1,200 entries. Something about that persistence makes me want to keep writing despite the decrease in frequency since moving to California and starting school.

So I will.

On Fire

The first four pieces I've made as part of my senior project. Featured materials include: Anasazi pot shards collected in New Mexico as a child, clip-on earrings from my grandmother's cousin, enameled and heat patina copper welded pod forms, etched and pierced copper, Brazilian capim dourado golden straw, antique Mozambique Island trade beads. These were not made to be a collection (they were just quick projects), but I am really happy that they seem to fit together quite nicely.

I am having one of those periods where things just come together. Thank God. It's nice timing, too, seeing as I've just started my final year of school.

After three long years of very, very, very hard work something big has shifted and I've found my voice and style as an artist. I don't now quite how to explain what happened, but things are feeling very different. Fluid. Easy. Fun, even.

Over the last three years I have been very concerned with the final product of my art-making. I wanted it to be beautiful, desirable, marketable, praise-worthy. Our instructors and other wise people kept saying that in order to make good art one needs to make bad art, but the prospect of making "bad art" seemed too scary to let happen.

I am a planner at heart, and my default way of working until this recent shift in spirit was to come up with a design, make a to-scale drawing or model, then execute that design. Making jewelry in this manner I got "good" results but always felt strangely insecure about my work. It was too commercial, too predictable, too this or too that. My internal hackles went up during critique, and it felt like a blow to the gut anytime someone gave their thoughts about what was unsuccessful about a particular piece. I felt a deep need for outer reassurance that my work was valid.

It was also a stressful way to work, for often in metalsmithing there are unforeseen technical problems that come up during the process, and I felt desperate when my super planned-out designs didn't work the way I needed them to. It made me feel very anxious when I had to deviate from the plan, like somehow I'd failed by not anticipating every little issue beforehand. I found that I often hated my pieces once they were finished, no matter how much praise I received from others. It was a very strange feeling to simultaneously love and hate the process of making jewelry so much.

I realized sometime last semester that something big had to give. I was on the fast track to burning out. I saw my colleagues working in a much looser way, playing around with materials and enjoying the experimental nature of seeing what works and what doesn't. I really wanted to be like that, too, but of course this is one of those things that you can't just wish for and have materialize.

I was aware for most of the semester that I was in the midst of a major growth period, and it was really uncomfortable. Painful, even. I cried an awful lot and had a major-ish breakdown right before my junior review mid-semester. I just wanted to be on the other side of that hump, making authentic and personally meaningful work and finding joy in the process. Yet there I was, stuck in the rut of feeling like I had no good ideas, being under pressure to make work, freaking out about deadlines, and having a hard time just letting go.

At a certain point, the way I'd been working became too much to bear. I was making myself sick from stress and was tired. Tired of crying, tired of feeling like my work was crappy, tired of trying and trying and not making progress.

So I gave up. I decided that my last round of projects would be unplanned, uncontrolled, and unpredictable. I started playing with raw materials and putting them together without knowing what the final product would look like. I allowed myself to experiment, to let go, to be more free with my process and accepting of the results, whatever they might be.

And wouldn't you know I made my very best work to date. Pieces that I was proud to show, that people's criticism or praise didn't really affect how I felt. *I* loved my work and felt it was authentic, fresh and unique. FINALLY.

After a quick step back into control freak/designer mode over the summer while working on the sapphire engagement ring (and making myself physically ill from stress all over again) I realized that this new way of working is something I want to embrace as a permanent part of my life as an artist. I am content to let go and let God (I like that phrase, even though I'm not particularly religious).

My task for the next two semesters is to create a body of work and then show it at an individual, week-long gallery exposition in May 2013. I approached our first assignment with the same loose, experimental philosophy I'd discovered in the Spring and found it to work really well. I am just playing with different arrangements of raw materials, using objects I've collected over the years and carried with me across the globe and back. These are objects that tell the story of who I am and the places and people that have touched me. By arranging them in new ways, creating groupings of materials, I have finally found a way to weave narrative and content into my work. I am able to talk about New Mexico, Italy, Brazil, Mozambique and everything in between and after, the way these cultures and places have shaped who I am.

It feels so good to finally have found my voice.

(Although part of me is super wary and anticipating the day when, a few months from now, I look back and laugh at that time in the beginning of senior project when I thought I had shit totally figured out.)

Sketches for Custom Carved Sapphire Engagement Ring

I've been trying to develop my rendering skills. It's a really hard process but with every sketch I get a little better, and it becomes a little easier.

Making of: Custom Carved Engagement Ring with Sapphire

I recently completed a commission for an engagement ring. It was a very intense project, as the client (a friend of mine) was really detail-oriented and we had a tight turnaround. He wanted a carved band with lots of organic detail, a center sapphire, and imagery inspired by Indonesia. I tried to create a motif that would reference an orchid flower as well as a lotus, common images in the woodcarvings and batik prints I looked at for reference.

I designed and made the bulk of this ring while on the road in New Mexico, visiting my dad and his wife and working out of my friend Lauren's amazing studio space. You should definitely check out Meltdown Studios if you are a metalsmith in Albuquerque needing some space to work out of. Lauren has created something pretty special, and I'm super grateful to her for all the support.

I first carved the bulk of the ring design in wax, then had a mold of it made in silicone (in case the casting failed for some reason). Then Lauren helped me cast the design in sterling silver, and I bought the center sapphire and the accent diamonds in what I thought would be nice sizes. Then I carved all the 14k gold accents, they are involved in all of the stone settings. I soldered everything together, then got a bunch of help from my professor Curtis when it came time to set the stone. We decided it looked best set upside-down (with the point of the stone facing up) and happily my client agreed.

I delivered the ring, he liked it, he proposed to his girlfriend in Paris, she said yes, very happy endings all around.

From design through to finished state, this is how it went down. Now I just need a photo from their wedding. :)

I have video of the client (my friend) receiving the ring and looking at it for the very first time. He asked me to film the moment. We were in an alleyway in San Francisco and Rico was waiting in the car on a conference call. It's pretty priceless, I'll try to share it at some point.