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53 ORNAMENT 35.5.2012 you could take one idea and make a thousand pieces that connect to it." The painting professor at Bowling Green brought Donald down to the jewelry and metals department, and while she enrolled in a few classes and independent studies, she found she "always identified more as a jeweler and less as a metalsmith." Paint and paper continued to be her palette of choice, particularly for the speediness and repetition with which she could work. "I could realize my ideas and experiment so much more; with metal everything took so much longer," she says. She stayed on track for her degree in painting, but found it difficult to focus on other electives when jewelry was so fulfilling. "I could have dialed into the paper jewelry and done it twelve hours a day, seven days a week forever and it would not have been enough." After graduation, Donald started a business and entered the craft show circuit for a short time, before relocating to Northern California in the 1990s. The beauty of the rural area struck her, and Donald became entranced by the land and terrain, getting involved in various organizations and just "being really tuned into the natural world." Her jewelry expanded from the paper works to those that incorporated this new interest. She made several pieces from items like birch bark and twigs, using organic materials in their natural state. When Donald's work was featured in Metalsmith's annual Exhibition in Print in 1998, it was her fruticose lichen bracelets—mossy, lime-green and yellow-tinged orbs that look as much like bracelets as they do an impromptu bird's nest. PIERCED AND PIECED ROCKER CUFF of rubber, nylon, oxidized silver; 16.5 x 8.3 x 8.3 centimeters, 2009. Right: CHRISTIE'S MIRO NECKLACE (detail) of rubber, nylon, amber, glass, oxidized silver; 45.7 x 4.4 x 4.4 centimeters, 2011. Opposite: MARY DONALD in her Los Angeles studio. Photographs by Patrick Liotta.