I was supposed to be an engineer. My father was, and from the time I was little I was going to be too. I was always good at math and science. I also enjoyed art. My drawings and paintings were frequently hung on the walls of my grade school class rooms and I won a few contests there. In my first high school art class my teacher kept my first still life as an example to other beginning art students as to how a still life should be done. I won a $1000 scholarship for an oil painting I did as a senior. I took my first jewelry classes in high school.
So when I went off to college I majored in engineering. I was going into software development and was taking classes in physics, calculus, programming and jewelry. Any way I could manage I would get into a jewelry class. I was supporting myself by making and selling jewelry. Then, while still a sophomore, I was interviewed and hired by IBM. So I cut off all my hair and was fired before I ever worked a day. Disillusioned, I left college to pursue what I really loved and went full on into the Arts and Crafts world.
I make my jewelry using the lost wax process: an ancient process where a wax model is carved, then surrounded in a plaster material, melted out of the plaster in a kiln, and finally cast (replaced) by molten metal using a centrifuge. My technique involves using dental tools and an alcohol lamp to create my wax model. I heat the tool in the flame of the lamp, touch it to some wax to collect a small drop then draw it out on thin sheet wax. It's similar to dipping a fountain pen into an ink well to write. I build up then carve back down the wax until the design is completed.
My work is influenced by the art nouveau jewelry of 100 years ago. I love the graceful and feminine lines of that period. One of the ideas that those artists subscribed to was that nature was not to be copied but mimicked: what nature has already done leave alone. Try instead to use that flower, animal or whatever as the motif or idea and tweak it to create something new. I like to do linked necklaces with a pattern that repeats allowing the line to flow throughout the piece.
My wife, painter Jan MacKay Bushart, and I live in Maui where the tropical flowers are everywhere. We enjoy hiking into remote areas of the island and sketching on location. Many of my designs are taken from these sketches. We also spend a great deal of time doing shows in the west and work with the wildflowers of the Sierra's and the Rocky's.
