PETRA CLASS – BROOCH/PENDANT

“My work is my life line during these trying times. It connects me to other humans in the most profound way: knowing that it will adorn another body and that the jewels I create are bringing pleasure to whoever ultimately takes ownership of them or is around someone who wears them. There were some dark days last year. I am fortunate to have a garden where nature shows me the light in the darkness, it’s eternal growth, even in it’s decay.

When I decided on the pieces to make for this exhibit I didn’t have to think, I followed a path that I had followed before and that I follow every day, when I water my cucumbers, weed my flower garden or pick raspberries in the forest. My collection of gemstones is a mirror of my garden and the endless variety of colors and shapes is just a reflection of the endless variety of beings, human or not, all connected in this pandemic, in growth and decline, an endless chain of existence. 

Even the pictures of this virus we are all dealing with are beautiful under a microscope, of the same eternal beauty that connects us all to the universe.

The brooch/pendant I called Corona for obvious reasons: the crown of creation we now learn we aren’t, but bursts of energy are to be found everywhere, in solar eruptions, in a million poppies opening their faces to the bumblebees in the morning, in the taste of wild strawberries popping in your mouth.”

-Petra Class