At the beginning of April, local artist Lori McDonald introduced her artistic perspective through jewelry and jewelry boxes to The Venue Fine Art & Gifts. Among her collection are earrings, bracelets and rings made from old materials.
“My focus is on using vintage pieces and reclaimed materials,” McDonald said. “There’s a real focus on breathing new life into found pieces and bringing them life in the present.”
Everything has a story, ?McDonald said, and with her work she hopes to introduce people to something old and new and something special.
Jewelry is only one part of McDonald’s latest exhibition. The artist also created living jewelry box terrariums, uniting the function of jewelry display with the natural world through live plants growing at the center of each box.
McDonald said she began making just one box for herself and fell in love with the idea of what she calls “a secret garden of living things.”
“I have my wedding ring in there, a necklace my dad gave me and a bracelet I wear all the time, pieces that are still living art for me,” McDonald said. “I want to see them and not stash them away.”
After she made one for ?herself, McDonald said she felt compelled to start making more so others could experience their own secret gardens.
Another art form with which McDonald experimented is a three-part vessel with little orbs of marimo moss ?inside.
“They’re little pond creatures,” McDonald said. “They are moss, they are alive and they live very well in aquariums. Someone found out they can live well in little glass ?vessels.”
McDonald placed the marimo balls into the vessels with water and more vintage material, this time beads she had since she was 8 years old.
“It just was a really cool way for me to acknowledge the vintage things of my own that weren’t really doing anything,” McDonald said.
An interesting feature of the marimo vessels is a characteristic of the moss orbs ?themselves.
McDonald said if an orb becomes “lonely,” it will migrate to another section of the vessel with some of the other moss orbs, then migrate back.
Much of McDonald’s inspiration, she said, comes from the natural world. This affinity for the outdoors began during her childhood growing up around the Rocky Mountains in Utah, where she frequently hiked and explored ?the wilderness.
“There’s ponds you can fish in,” McDonald said. “There are places you can just go swim. There are waterfalls. I miss it every day.”
McDonald added that, when she was young, she frequently visited her grandparents’ house to feed the geese and the chickens. She would also run around and catch crickets, though she always let them go afterward.
“I like to experience nature all over the planet, as much as I possibly can,” ?McDonald said.
Nature is not her only source of inspiration. In terms of vintage fashion, McDonald said her grandmother is responsible for instilling in her a reverence for couture and trends from years past.
“She has the most ?fantastic vintage collection,” McDonald said. “Every single time she got a paycheck, she would buy something that was already vintage for her or something new and trendy. That’s where my passion for vintage came from.”
McDonald said her grandmother’s keen eye for style helped her when she worked running a retail shop, dressing people for a living.
“She’s the one who invented how fabulous wearing art could be,” McDonald said.
The idea of taking on jewelry making as an art form, McDonald said, came when she visited the mountains with her uncle and met a group who were already working on their own handmade beading.
“There was this beautiful Native American family who were making these teeny little pots, and then they would swirl them around, and their little kilns were sitting next to them,” McDonald said. “I was watching this process and I was completely enamored with it.”
She used the money she had to buy some of the beads from the family, though she initially was not sure how to use what she bought, ?she said.
McDonald said once she attached the beads to some leather and wore them around, she received compliments from people interested in having the pieces for themselves. From then on, she produced jewelry ?for sale.
Art is the life breath of today’s society, McDonald said.
“Art is expressed in every different way,” McDonald said. “It expresses an entire culture, community (and) time frame. It’s completely limitless.”
