Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
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37 ORNAMENT 38.1.2015 A t first glance, Sara Owens's island studio appears to be the private study of a naturalist with a taste for the mysterious. A large vitrine displays half a dozen objects that seem to come from the natural world, though not a world most of us have seen. Some of the palm-sized objects are bulbous, metallic forms attached at odd angles to bits of bone. Others look like tiny meteorites mated to decaying seedpods. Nearby a wooly brown lifeform of some kind—moss? bacteria?—has settled comfortably into the center of a metal mesh saucer. If the objects make you think about what they might be and how they came to look the way they do, Owens, who made them all, would be pleased. Above all, she says, "I want my work to inspire wonder." Owens is a jewelrymaker and every one of the objects is a brooch. The pieces represent her fascination with the idea that in the natural world, design follows function. They are also testament to her enthusiastic exploration of materials, particularly nontraditional materials. One of the hallmarks of her work is an ability to coax evocative texture and shape out of materials as mundane as paper coffee filters and hardware-store sink drains. Made from animal bone, brass and used coffee filters manipulated into papier-mâché, the brooches are from her Proteus Series. She describes the series as being "about how beauty can emerge from limitations, as exemplified by evolution. I am fascinated by the beautiful curves and textures of bone because these features were not designed by an artist or an engineer. The beauty comes, instead, from a history of mutations that were either well suited to the environment or not. It is not simply the bone itself that is interesting, it is also this accumulated history of subtle adaptations that leads to its present form that is so fascinating." At twenty-eight, Owens, who lives and works on Whidbey Island just northwest of Seattle, is in the early days of her career. She earned her BFA in metals, cum laude, from the University of Washington, graduating in 2008. She was part of the last class to graduate from the renowned program, which the university terminated in the summer of 2008. During her studies Owens took classes from many of the Pacific Northwest's most celebrated professional metalsmiths. The very first metals class she ever took, anywhere, was at the University of Washington and taught by the distinguished jewelrymaker Mary Lee Hu. She had previously toured the metals studio, and was fascinated by the hand tools. She realized that if she majored in metals, "I could know how to use everything in here by the time I graduate." The class with Mary Lee Hu "sealed the deal. She really pushed me to try difficult things." At graduation Owens was awarded the Rabinovitch Purchase Award, an annual award sponsored by the late U.W. Professor Seymour Rabinovitch, who was a patron of the metal arts. More recently Owens's work earned awards from galleries in Washington State and Brooklyn. Some of her jewelry constructed with handmade felt is currently part of a touring exhibition organized by the Museum Nagele, in The Netherlands. Along with found objects from the natural world, Owens is also drawn to found objects from the industrial world. The local junkyard is a favorite haunt. She likes to build jewelry around such discarded SARA OWENS IN STUDIO. Photograph by Michael Stadler.