Adina DeRoy-Stouffer is a jeweler and mixed media artist working and teaching in the Pittsburgh area for the past seventeen years. Working in metals, glass, metal clay, gemstones, and recycled materials, Adina draws inspiration from nature for her creations: leaves, trees, landscapes, animals, and shells are among the themes that are woven throughout her creations. As a studio artist, Adina’s focus is often on creating works entirely out of wires in various sizes and metals. She uses these to create both jewelry and wire sculpture. In addition to being a jeweler, Adina is also a fiber artist creating works from recycled materials, surplus yarns and other fibers usually destined for landfills. Using various techniques, Adina creates both wearable and decorative artworks, “Painting” an image in fibers and yarns by sewing them together, felting, or adhering the fibers to a variety of substrates. In combining these two media, Adina often creates works in metal that imitate the movement and appearance of fabric by imprinting fiber textures directly into metal itself. She also incorporates weaving and other traditionally fiber techniques into her metal creations as well as creates jewelry entirely from fibers. Adina DeRoy-Stouffer is a member of the Craftsmen’s Guild of Pittsburgh, and a certified Rio Grande Metal Clay instructor. For the past eleven years she has been a metalsmithing and jewelry instructor at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, teaching on-site classes as well as community and residency programs. Adina also enjoys teaching in various community centers, smaller art centers and schools as well as her private teaching studio. Adina exhibits yearly at A Fair in the Park, as well as selling her work in local galleries and art shows.

Alexander Draven of the ExCB is a watchmaker and metalsmith who creates one of a kind pieces using only hand tools from sterling silver and other noble metals. From the Corset and Nail Rings that forged his initial collection during art school to numerous commissions, including one of a kind wedding / engagement sets and grooms’ watches, he has steadily expanded not only his line, but also his customer base from northeast Ohio to a national audience. You can find him online at www.TheExCB.com and on most social media as @TheExCB

Allison Jones is a metalsmith living and working in Pittsburgh, PA. Her work is fabricated from sterling silver, concrete, and felt. www.allisonhiltonjones.com

I have always loved jewelry and gemstones. They speak to me in ways that other beautiful things never have. I used to purchase beads and focal stones without a clue as what to do with them, just because they were beautiful and wanted me to take them home. Several years ago, after a couple of beginner jewelry-making classes, I was driven to teach myself more, always led by the stones.

When I discovered wire weaving, I knew I had found my passion. The precision of the weaves, combined with the flow of the lines of the wire, serve to hold the stones securely while emphasizing their natural beauty. While I often start with an outline of an idea, I let my intuition lead and the stones tell me how to proceed. My pieces appeal to people who are attracted to the unique, who use jewelry to express themselves, and who themselves are attracted to gems and their metaphysical properties.

Anthony Arkus strives to create work that invites the viewer’s touch with a tactile, appealing surface. Arkus is a blacksmith artist hand forging architectural elements, furniture, and sculptures. Arkus fashions organic, botanical forms using abstract, contemporary aesthetics to achieve his goal of creating well-proportioned and timeless functional art that is beautiful and pushes the viewer’s beliefs in what steel can do.  

Bonnie Hedden is a North Central Pennsylvania based jewelry artist who creates individually handcrafted pieces by use of traditional metalsmithing and wireworking techniques. She constructs each piece from start to finish in her home studio. Bonnie has exhibited her jewelry at fine art & craft venues along the northeast since 2001. Since that time, jewelry has been her full-time pursuit. Tenacity, practice, tools and time have led her to the freeform style she possesses today, garnering awards and recognition along the way. www.bonnieheddendesigns.com

Studied as apprentice with Jan Frijters, taken courses in stone setting and jewelry rendering. Earned my GIA Gemologist degree.

I create jewelry using porcelain, stoneware and terra cotta clay. I roll the clay out by hand, add texture using various objects, then cut the clay and mold the clay into shapes. Each piece is glazed and kiln fired 3 or 4 times. After the firings, I add beading using seed beads, pearls, as well as stone, crystal and glass beads. All ear wires are nickel free.

Gerry Florida is an award-winning recycle assemblage artist who refers to herself as a “Master of Imperfection”. Her creations deliver underlying messages of rebirth, recovery and reclamation through an array of salvaged, recycled and contemporary materials that she employs in work. Her intrigue with the “beauty of imperfection” has led her to work on behalf of at-risk populations locally and nationally fostering the belief that integrating failures, accepting imperfections and embracing differences is the path to living in harmony with the imperfections surrounding us and to living in sync with the real world and the one we can create. She works under the name of Florida Recycled and is the Artist Facilitator of Special Projects with Allegheny County Shuman Detention Center. www.floridarecycled.com

Professionally trained for jewelry designs and enamel artist/goldsmith. 25 years of practice in jewelry designs and making. Awards and Honor We Received in 2018 1. Best of Jewelry, 2018 Dogwood Art Festival, Atlanta, GA; 2. Judges Choice Award, 2018 Boardwalk Art Show of Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA; 3. 1st Place in Jewelry Category, 2018 Summerfair, Cincinnati, OH; 4. Distinction in Jewelry Category, 2018 Fairhope Arts & Crafts Festival, Fairhope, AL; 5. Best of Show, 2018 Lakeshore Art Festival, Muskegon, MI; 6. Special Recognition, 2018 Uptown Art Fair, Minneapolis, MN; 7. Award of Merit, 2018 Morning Glory Fine Craft Fair, Milwaukee, WI; 8. Judges Selection Award, 2018 Cain Park Arts Festival, Cleveland Heights, OH; 9. Fine Craft Award, 2018 Spring Fiesta in the Park, Orlando, FL; 10. Best of Display, 2018 Art Street, Green Bay, WI. 11. Juror for 2019 Syracuse Arts and Crafts Festival, Syracuse, NY

Joy Knepp has been working as a glass artist for more than 14 years and is a retired art educator from the Shanksville-Stonycreek School District. In her glass work she uses a torch to melt colored glass rods and then forms and shapes the glass into beads and small sculptural pieces. The beads are used to create jewelry and other sculptural forms. She enjoys complexity and versatility of the material and how glass illuminates light and color. She is inspired by colors, textures and patterns found in nature especially in the changing seasons of Pennsylvania. Her education includes Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Art and Education from Pennsylvania State University. She has studied and taught techniques in Glass at Touchstone Center for Crafts, Farmington, PA. She has also studied at Pittsburgh Glass Center, Goggleworks in Reading, PA. and several ISGB sponsored workshops. Her work has been exhibited and sold in galleries in the region. She is a member of the International Society of Glass Beadmakers and the Three Rivers Glass Beadmakers, and Craftsmen’s Guild of Pittsburgh. Joybeadzglass.etsy.com

My career as a craftsman reflects the influence of both my parents, one a businessman, the other a prolific visual artist. I studied architecture at Yale, and metalworking at Penland and Haystack, and have taught the intricacies of business, marketing, and management to fellow artists. These days I live and work with my husband and daughter in a house on the top of a hill in Pittsburgh. www.karenkrieger.com

My jewelry is all made with a miniature reproduction of one of my watercolor paintings as a focal piece. I recently started hand fabricating sterling silver and adding semi precious stones to my designs. My pewter settings are cast from a clay model that I sculpted.

I flamework glass into simple sculptural forms that I fit together into bold, geometric jewelry. Many of my pieces evoke flowers reflecting my deep knowledge and appreciation of the botanical world. I work directly with the glass in the flame, constantly moving and shaping the glass with heat and gravity. I wind and shape the glass into thin discs and sculptural shapes. I take full artistic advantage of the glass’ chemistry, mixing opal and reactive colors, creating lusters and layering with transparents. The resulting thin glass discs and flowers are layered and suspended above each other with sterling wire to create a variety of jewelry pieces including necklaces, earrings, and brooches. The seedbead framework forms an integral part of the design and clasp. I take delight in the endless mutability and experimentation allowed by the glass medium. I enjoy the personal size and detail of flameworked glass, and the challenge of making wearable, yet exciting pieces. www.rushcreekglass.com

Linda “Sorcie” Smith has been working with beads and collecting new and old jewelry since her teenage years. It’s only since September of 1998, however, that she turned her hand to more serious jewelry making in the form of precious metal jewelry design. Her jewelry is created using semi-precious gemstones and woven, wrapped and sculpted fine metal wire. Linda is mostly self-taught , finding inspiration from online professionals. Linda has written jewelry tutorials for Step By Step Wire Jewelry, as well as for online websites. In 2003, she took first place in the Creative Wire Jewelry Winter Blues Swap, an international art jewelry challenge, with her original piece Blue Wails.

Linda has a varied creative background that includes theatrical roles in high school, college and community theater, as well as co-direction and stage management. Her poetic, creative and journalistic writings have been published in the Beaver County Times, Valley Tribune and college literary magazine. While attending her alma mater, Penn State, she was a page editor and feature columnist for the Penn State Beaver Herald.

http://FacetsOfLight.com

I create my pieces as both a fine artist and graphic designer. Before I even begin I see the completed piece in my mind’s eye. With the elements of color, texture, shapes, beads, pearls and gemstones one-of-a-kind pieces are born. Each piece is completely done by hand with meticulous attention to detail as well as overall design and wearability. The tiny glass seed beads require multiple stitching processes to form the piece including beaded beads and clasps. I also add fresh water pearls, gemstones and crystals as accents.  

As a primarily self-taught jewelry artist, Michelle Sophia Sabol began working under the name Memphis George and Memphis George Jewelry was born in Los Angeles, CA in 1998. It remains a distinctly unique couture brand in the handmade studio artist movement. Memphis George Jewelry has been worn to the Oscars by award nominees and in films by stars such as Selena Gomez and Jane Lynch, among others. It is in the private collections of the former editor of W magazine, the arts and entertainment editor of the Los Angeles Times and other prominent art-to-wear collectors. Ms Sabol has studied and worked in avant-garde cinema, film and television production, and the fashion industry in San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA. In addition to selling her handmade couture, running a busy studio and her gallery and art show schedule, she is currently working as a Teaching Artist through multiple Pennsylvania state and local Pittsburgh grants partnering with community service organizations to teach art-to-wear as self-expression, an educational tool and a healing art.

I create unique hand fabricated Jewelry from Silver, Gold, Stones ( semi precious, precious), fossils, coins and found objects. Inspirations for my art flow from many sources : some of these include nature, geometry, stones (their colors, shapes, sizes,patterns and energetic qualities) and ancient symbols. All my creations are handcrafted using a variety of tools and techniques in the process. Some of these include soldering, sawing, metal texturing, overlay, inlay, stamping, stone setting, bi-metal soldering, riveting, polishing, lapidary and more. Great attention,detail, precision, and quality materials are combined to create these pieces of wearable art. My intention is that these pieces bring joy, beauty, and positive energy to the wearer. www.mysticalcrystaljewelry.com

I hand craft each piece in my studio using traditional metal smithing techniques including fabrication, forming, forging, granulation, bezel and flush setting. Hand selected stones are a focal point in my jewelry. I juxtapose metals including silver and karat gold around the stones to create one of a kind designs that are original, wearable and timeless. zenialisjewelry.com