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Photograph by Kathy De La Torre
'Garden Impressions' pendants, handcrafted by Joyce Chadderdon, are part of a jewelry exhibit at Gallery Saratoga.
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Friends make art jewelry together
By Sandy Sims
On any evening or weekend, Joyce Chadderdon, Leslie Cummins-Clarkson and Stephanie North are hammering, sawing, heating, bending and soldering pieces of metal into leaves and flowers, whimsical shapes or sleek contemporary designs. Sometimes they even add pretty stones or frosty beach glass to the melange.
The three close friends worked especially hard recently forging jewelry for Gallery Saratoga, where their work is featured through the end of May.
Each of the women began her art as a youngster in a different part of the United States. Chadderdon, a physical therapist at Los Gatos Community Hospital, began studying art in high school at Steven's Point, Wis. and then at Milwaukee Technology School, where she took a jewelry class that she loved.
"I was interested in art and science," Chadderdon says, and her jewelry reflects those interests. Several of her pieces are created from titanium and niobium, two hypo-allergenic, lightweight metals; titanium is also the metal used in joint replacements and in aerospace technology. These reactive metals anodize into different colors depending on the level of heat to which they are exposed. Chadderdon exhibits necklaces woven with thread-thin strands of titanium to form a thin hollow tube and then heated at different temperatures in different sections to create a rainbow of color.
She also exhibits a number of anodized bracelets and spiral earrings and has recently taken on the daunting task of metal-working with gold. Her exhibit shows delicate gold pieces, including a tiny sunflower pendant.
Cummins-Clarkson's day job is with a Silicon Valley pharmaceutical startup. She started casting jewelry from bronze and silver during her high school years in Mountain View. Later, she took sculpture, painting and jewelry-making at Mission College in Santa Clara. She also knits about six complicated sweater patterns a year. "I love the rhythm of knitting," she says.
After a long hiatus from most of her artwork from the mid-1970s to the late-1980s, Cummins-Clarkson returned to sculpture and eventually to jewelry.
"Jewelry-making is a quicker art," she says "not so slow and big as sculpture." She likes working found objects into her jewelry, such as beach glass, pebbles and shards of pottery she finds at a beach in northern California. Her whimsical necklaces in the gallery are made from stained glass she puts in a tumbler to smooth the edges and to add a soft patina. Cummins-Clarkson likes her leaves to look real. But it's not easy. Working with metal means working until it hardens, then heating it to soften it again, over and over.
North by day is a copy editor for an advertising firm. She got her artistic start in fourth grade in Ohio, when she had an art teacher who created special projects using an enamel kiln. North says she was fortunate to later study sculpture and jewelry with Earl Pardon in upstate New York. "Pardon was known as the father of modern art in jewelry," she says.
After moving to California in 1970, North dabbled in various crafts such as beading and macramé. She also cultivated a large bonsai collection. In 1990, she enrolled in a jewelry class at the Palo Alto Cultural Center, where she took classes from Edith Sommer. That is where North met Cummins-Clarkson and Chadderdon.
North sees her jewelry as a combination of metals and dimensions. "The creative part is making dimension and the metal flow together," she says. She likes combining metals such as silver and brass or copper, as well as titanium and niobium. She also uses beach glass and scrap material on some of her collage pieces.
To create her leaves, North photocopies real leaves and then draws the pattern onto the metal. Along with broaches and rings, her perfect oak and eucalyptus leaves created in silver are on exhibit at the gallery.
"All three of us do fold forming," North says of a method of folding metal in half to hammer, forge, bend, heat and repeat the process. Then, an artist opens the piece up and puts on the finishing touches. "But," she says, "the end product for each one is quite different." Each artist pushes her own limits, trying new metals and new techniques.
Gallery Saratoga is at 14531 Big Basin Way, Unit 3. Call 408.867.0458 for gallery hours or more information.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
