I’m an LA girl living in upstate NY where we are just now emerging from a long hard snow laden winter, the glory of the snow and daffodils are blooming in the arboretum and I am so excited for the sun. My studio is in an old fruit syrup factory where I’m told there is an exotic ant that was brought over with some fruit years ago and only lives in our building. Karl Blossfeldt’s black and white photographs of plants and seedpods inspire me. The intelligence of shapes is endlessly fascinating to me and seems to point to the plant’s consciousness. My favorite enamel color right now is bitter green, which takes on different tones when over fired in the kiln. The music I’m listening to right now is Beirut, and Postcards from Italy, which makes me forget I’m in the U.S. Thanks San Francisco Bazaar.

I first got involved with crafting upon returning to the States after five years in India. It was a pretty shocking transition from a simple village life to the apparent meaninglessness of Los Angeles. I felt that Americans had forgotten how to be human in some basic ways, like no one was sitting out on their front porch and shooting the shit with passing neighbors or just interacting in general in a natural way. I fled to craft school in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina where I learned to use my hands as a metalsmith/jeweler. Learning a craft restored me to wholeness in some new way and gave me a path to follow, which is based on the premise that beauty has meaning.

One of my favorite indie artists right now is Lisa Norris of “Made by One Girl” she uses vintage pattern paper to construct “paintings” of a woman or man’s silhouette wearing a vintage dress or suit that she has created from thousands of strips of pattern paper. They are framed and stand life size and are so cool.

One of the things I’m excited about developing is a line of my jewelry but cast in glass instead of metal. My sweetheart is a glassblower, and I’d love to be able to collaborate with him on some cast glass jewelry. It would be really neat for me to work in another medium but with my same shapes and see what comes of it.

You can see Amber’s jewelry at manidesignsjewlery.com.