experimenting with for several years. “I used to make them in bronze and then oxidize the bronze, which gets these beautiful colors, so I was thinking how could I do that in silver? I was soldering something very hot onto the catch-and-join on the back, and then I turned it around and I realized, wow, this is beautiful. It’s sort of a raku type of project, you can’t really control it.” This surrender to the process yields patterns of dense black against the silver that evoke the qualities of an Abstract Expressionist painting. TRANSFORMATION The TRANSFORMATION project inspired, among many other things, two very different butterfly pieces. José Hess’s Mariposa incorporates the three stages of a butterfly’s development through two carved gemstones—a chrysoprase for the caterpillar and a tiger’s eye for the pupa—and a hand-fabricated platinum butterfly, all attached to a tree branch carved from wax and cast in silver coated with PVD gold. Inspired by a trip to a Lepidoptera sanctuary in Costa Rica, Pascal Lacroix also utilized platinum and chrysoprase for his adult butterfly with outstretched wings. “Platinum is a very noble metal and through the different texture finishes, it gave me the opportunity to play with shades of white in a subtle way that only the butterfly can embody,” he says. Alan Revere takes a more symbolic approach in his Aymara brooch, which he describes as a “medallion for spiritual growth and transformation.” Named for the Aymara people who live in the plains of Peru and Bolivia and “believe in the natural spirits and energies around them,” Revere’s platinum heart pierced by holes of different sizes projects both solidity and permeability. “Down the middle of it runs a river of gold, kind of like a volcanic flow,” says Revere. “The piece is about ecstasy, about embodiment. It’s about finding bliss through the body.” STRIPES For Zoltan David, shapes and motifs can also have an ecstatic quality. He calls this “spiritual geometry” and finds it all around us. “Spiritual geometry is no different than the effect of a grand mountain range appearing on the horizon as we travel towards it,” he says. “This is a nature-made geometry. Man- made geometry is similar. We can create forms that have specific effect on the mind of the observer.” His faceted heptagonal earrings in blue zirconium with vertical stripes of engraved inlaid gold are designed to activate light. “I often say that in truth I am working with light, creating forms, surfaces, and colors to manipulate light to the observer.” Paul Klecka takes on our national iconography in his elegant palladium Stripes and Stars ring. STRIPES DETAIL BY MARK SCHNEIDER 18