Ornament Magazine

VOL38.1 2015

Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.

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55 ORNAMENT 38.1.2015 Romano's nearly four-year-long internship with Curtis and Marion LaFollette provided the foundation for her career as a jeweler. The LaFollettes, who live in Cherryfield, Maine, helped shape her aesthetic. "It's where the metal and the fiber came together," Romano notes, with Curtis, a distinguished metalsmith, guiding her in the former and Marion, a master weaver, introducing her to the latter. The couple helped Romano figure out technical elements. Curtis found a protective heat blanket that allowed her to solder around the wool. Marion came up with the idea to weigh the wool on a digital scale in order to control the sizes of the felt pieces. This year, Romano has taken on an intern of her own, Emily Shaffer, a 2014 graduate of Kutztown University. Shaffer had been in Maine before, as an instructor at Camp Med-O-Lark, "the fine arts camp of New England," helping to run the metalsmithing and enameling program. In 2013 she was one of ten students invited to showcase work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, which is where she met Romano. The internship includes hands-on training in technique, but also exposure to the administrative side of the work. As if life was not full enough, Romano is in her second term as president of the board of the Maine Crafts Association. With director Sadie Bliss (who previously worked at the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston and managed CraftBoston), she has helped to revitalize the association in the years since the recession. The Maine Arts Commission and Maine Association of Nonprofits have been important sounding boards. STITCHED FELT CASCADING NECKLACE of silver, felted merino wool, cotton thread, needle felted, surface stitching on machine with thread, 2013. CHERRY BOMB EARRINGS of silver, felted merino wool, 2004. All photographs by Ralph Gabriner except where noted. Opposite Page: ABACUS BROOCH of silver, felted merino wool, 2005. "Without craft," Romano says, "a culture has no depth, meaning, purpose, or direction." While she appreciates the new technologies that help her create and market her work, using her hands to create ornaments connects her to the past. She is pleased to be passing on some of her knowledge as a way, she says, "to keep it alive."

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