Andi Clarke
Andi has dabbled with various art media over her lifetime including during her Education degree with its Fine Arts major. The one medium that she has been most passionate about has been jewelry making, particularly her sea glass, up cycled broken china and nature jewelry ranges which she started making in 2004.
Over the years she has transitioned from a soft soldering style for creating settings to soldering with sterling silver and a torch as most silversmiths and jewelry artists do. She is entirely self taught as a jewelry artist, having inherited a life long love of learning and an ability to master various tools.
Andi has done art and vendor events all over the South Sound since 2015 and has been a vendor at The Olympia Farmers Market since 2019, which is her regular "shop" other than having her items also available on her website.
STATEMENT
There is nothing more exciting than being on a beach and finding a piece of sea glass that has just been brought in by the sea's high tide. It's even more exciting for me to look at this piece and to imagine the possibilities and potential jewelry designs that this piece could be used for.
During travels with my family I am often on beaches looking for these well rounded and jewelry grade quality pieces of sea glass. If you have ever hunted for sea glass you will know what I mean by this. Some pieces of sea glass need to be tossed back into the waves to spend another decade or two becoming more rounded and weathered by the sea.
My family help me find the pieces of sea glass on whichever beaches we are on and occasionally people will give me pieces of sea glass that are good enough to be used in jewelry. I also try to document where the pieces of sea glass have come from.
I consider my use of sea glass and broken china in jewelry settings to be a type of recycling or up cycling. Our world needs less garbage and if something beautiful can be made out of something that may have been thrown out or actually was thrown out, all the better.
For my shell and botanical jewelry ranges I use a precious metal clay, or PMC, which is a fine silver in an organic clay binder. Fine silver is actually 99% silver as opposed to sterling silver which is 92.5% The silver in this clay is in fact recycled silver from the processing and developing of black and white photography. I torch fire these pieces and seeing the sand dollar emerge and morph from the clay to the silver is a magical process that I never get tired of doing.
Over the years she has transitioned from a soft soldering style for creating settings to soldering with sterling silver and a torch as most silversmiths and jewelry artists do. She is entirely self taught as a jewelry artist, having inherited a life long love of learning and an ability to master various tools.
Andi has done art and vendor events all over the South Sound since 2015 and has been a vendor at The Olympia Farmers Market since 2019, which is her regular "shop" other than having her items also available on her website.
STATEMENT
There is nothing more exciting than being on a beach and finding a piece of sea glass that has just been brought in by the sea's high tide. It's even more exciting for me to look at this piece and to imagine the possibilities and potential jewelry designs that this piece could be used for.
During travels with my family I am often on beaches looking for these well rounded and jewelry grade quality pieces of sea glass. If you have ever hunted for sea glass you will know what I mean by this. Some pieces of sea glass need to be tossed back into the waves to spend another decade or two becoming more rounded and weathered by the sea.
My family help me find the pieces of sea glass on whichever beaches we are on and occasionally people will give me pieces of sea glass that are good enough to be used in jewelry. I also try to document where the pieces of sea glass have come from.
I consider my use of sea glass and broken china in jewelry settings to be a type of recycling or up cycling. Our world needs less garbage and if something beautiful can be made out of something that may have been thrown out or actually was thrown out, all the better.
For my shell and botanical jewelry ranges I use a precious metal clay, or PMC, which is a fine silver in an organic clay binder. Fine silver is actually 99% silver as opposed to sterling silver which is 92.5% The silver in this clay is in fact recycled silver from the processing and developing of black and white photography. I torch fire these pieces and seeing the sand dollar emerge and morph from the clay to the silver is a magical process that I never get tired of doing.
