Patty Bolz Designer / Goldsmith

I did not set out with the intention of becoming a jeweler or a designer. Feeling intimidated by my lack of experience, I avoided the Art Department in college despite my secret yearnings and headed into other disciplines.  Some 10 years later, while forging a career in education, I signed up on a whim for a night class in jewelry making at a local art center. That experience shifted my career direction 180 degrees:  I was hooked!  I finished the academic year and headed off to a full-time program in jewelry making. That was over 40 years ago, and I’ve been working full-time as a designer/goldsmith ever since. 

I am as drawn to the actual making of jewelry as I am to the jewelry itself.  I have an intimate relationship with the raw materials that comprise my work --metal and stone--and the manipulation of these. The intricate mechanics of bezels and clasps, the ever-emerging forms, patterns, and textures, all play their own part in the creative process. My studio is my haven, full of small oddities, collected over the years; objects that often display the evidence of time--patinated by weather, eroded by rust, decayed by years--they carry a sense of the ancient.  These small collections loosely inform my design direction.  Jewelry, represented by a physical object, often holds a significance and connection that shifts as years pass …whether gifted, exchanged, inherited, or coveted, it acts as talisman of heritage, family, love, or loss. It is my hope that my designs speak to this passage of time and to the importance of honoring these histories, blending a sense of antiquity with a contemporary appeal.