ART and CRAFT IWACA
40 | IWACA
ART and
CRAFT
With Abigail Orr
I
have had a fascination with small, shiny things since I was a little
a little munchkin. I loved anything I could fit in the palm of my hand, things I could carry around with me, like a little security blanket almost. It was my thing. As I got older, I loved taking art classes and proudly identified myself as the creative-artsy type. In high school, I took a jewelry-making class and got my first taste of metalwork! I still have a ring that I made in that class and I still love it. I tried many different mediums of art over the years; from pastels to colored pencils to photography to pottery, trying to find where I fit in, what my true passion was.
A few years ago, I took another jewelry-making class through The Des Moines Art Center: Beginning Jewelry — learning the foundations of metalsmithing. It was a wonderful class and I
learned A LOT. But I knew I couldn’t afford the equipment for all of the advanced jewelry making. So I kept searching for where I fitted in. Then I found this amazing little bead shop called “Fishlips3 Beads & Blues” (funny name, right?!) located in Valley Junction, which is a small shopping district in West Des Moines, Iowa. They are much more than a little bead shop, they offer jewelry-making classes from beadwork to wire wrapping. Ding Ding Ding! I took the introductory wire wrapping class, which was a one-time three-hour lesson. From there I started playing with wire, researching different ways to wrap, and finding inspiration from other wrappers.
I started wrapping sea-glass thanks to my mother. We vacationed at the beach every year and her favorite thing to do was walk on the beach. Over the years,