Artist Statement

This past year I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the “why” of my work. Some years ago I took a business class and one of the questions they asked was “What need does your business fulfill in the world?” I shied away from this question for years, all of my initial reactions to it being somewhat judgemental and limiting. “Does the world NEED more jewelry?” I would immediately ask myself. “With so much that is difficult in this world, so much that is truly needing reform and aid and succor, is jewelry truly a thing that I can claim as my calling?” is roughly what would float through my mind. Well, this year I decided to finally sit with the question. To acknowledge that the things that make us uncomfortable enough to avoid are often things that hold a significant charge for us. So I decided to try and figure out what it was about jewelry that I felt in my personal experience. Why was I always drawn to it and how did it make me feel? I learned, as I sat in contemplation, that jewelry has always made me FEEL things! That I have used it both as a means of feeling empowered and as a way for me to feel connected, to a deeper self that is hard to express in words, to a concept or place, to an inherited story passed down through generations of human experience.

So, I came to understand that, perhaps like all art, jewelry is about feelings. And that with its intimate relationship to our bodies, touching, holding, reminding (our bodies acting as the frame, the altar with which we carry sacred items and relics), often it is about how we feel about, and within, ourselves. There is something about it that can help us to access parts of ourselves that are deeper or beyond what we might experience in our quotidian existence. Sometimes this part of ourselves is without word to describe, simply a feeling of alignment or “rightness”, an expression of a part of ourself that is so mysterious and yet so essential. Other times it may be a clear demarcation of a symbol or allegory that has either a personal resonance or interpersonal meaning, rain clouds in the desert, a pearl to represent an ancestor, a reminder of our struggles and our triumphs.

Some of the oldest forms of art that we have discovered are shell beads thought to be worn as jewelry. They are dated as 150,000 years old. This speaks to me of the intrinsic instinct to adorn ourselves. It makes me wonder at the use of jewelry as a means of connecting to place, perhaps reminding us that we are vaster than we often think. A part of a larger ecosystem that is the natural world, not solely a singular self but a cell within the larger body of the Universe… That’s some pretty potent magic to carry around with oneself as we traverse this wild life thing. And that’s the possibility held within jewelry as an artform. This is the “why” of my work. To provide people with a means of expressing these deep and vast truths. (Which, honestly are often felt through something as simple as “I like it!”. Simplicity is often the most attuned we can be…)

So, be it some profound mystery or some simple enjoyment, my work is made to empower, delight and connect its wearers to themselves, the world and the wonder that is existing.

~Faye Marie Astra

January 1, 2024