The Purpose of the Smallbridge Studio Website
It is a privilege to realize my lifelong dream of being a fulltime artist after a gratifying career in librarianship. To honor that I asked my granddaughter Melissa Williams Zimmerman to design this website as a thank you to family and friends who have made my life so fulfilled and to present a mini review of my late-in-life oeuvre. This is not a sales site. The art displayed on this site is created for people I love and admire. Pieces are occasionally donated for sale to a pet charity.
The Why Of Smallbridge Jewelry
The pieces take from days to weeks to develop. The rather extensive amounts of precious metals necessitate most becoming pendants because they are too heavy to pin on many clothing fabrics. They are not meant to be costume jewelry but to become collector items of jewelry and miniature sculpture. They can be worn, hung, displayed or framed.
The How Of Smallbridge Jewelry
In designing jewelry I start with ideas from close observation of nature and my emotional reactions to what I see. I sketch a lot but do not refer to sketches when I work except for mechanical needs. Sometimes I transfer ideas from parts of my watercolors. As I play with wire or shapes in silver, copper or brass, ideas and forms begin to take shape in my mind. I follow up with metalsmith techniques to build and refine the ideas into individual jewelry pieces and mini sculptures. Line and reflected light are paramount to me in bringing forth beginnings in nature from seedlings to ocean waves and to social constructs involving human forms.
In working on pieces I may decide to take them apart even when they are nearly complete leaving a healthy “scrap pile” of incomplete precious metal pieces. Inevitably, these previously worked scraps of pieces are incorporated in other work where they “work.” In ten years and from many sheets of silver, copper and brass, I have only a cigar box full of scraps of precious metals waiting to be re-soldered or re-melted and cast into forms. I love scraps of any kind and tromping through metal junkyards. Thus, as my critique group of art professors at the University of Nebraska helped me to recognize, I am primarily an “assembler” sculptor. I build forms by revising and combining pieces to make an imagined form. I do not “see” forms such as a head or body waiting to be released from within a piece of stone or wood. Carving is not a creative skill I use much, but I can’t seem to get enough hours of welding, forming, gluing, punching, drilling, sawing, blacksmithing, and foundry casting.
Finishing metal pieces requires applying patinas, extensive hand polishing (which I prefer to machine worked surfaces) and light beeswax buffing to protect from scratches and oxidation. I store pieces in anti-tarnish flannel or ziplock plastic bags with tiny strips of anti tarnish paper.