ABOUT THE ARTIST

Award winning, New Mexico jewelry artist Carrie Adell sought to express the power of Nature in her handmade beads, known as touchstones. Each is a microcosm of the earth’s formative strata. Using married metals, Carrie’s designs incorporated a wide range of metalsmithing techniques and materials.

Carrie once described her work this way: “What I’m doing now is asking, how many different ways can I create patterns that look like they may have been inclusions or crystallization or sedimentary deposits and the cracks/pockets therein?”

She hoped to make people think about how rocks ‘happen’ by rendering geological processes in metal. Through her pieces she encouraged her audience to think about and understand the forces which shape our world – and ourselves. In everything about Carrie did, she challenged people to think. Her passion was contagious. Her creative spirit was infinite.

Carrie inscribed some of her touchstones with haiku, or phrases that were meaningful to her. The poem below is hers.

The earth speaks for itself.
We do not listen
Heeding our own greed, as though
We had another place
to be.

Carrie Adell passed away in 2001. She remains an important artist and inspiration for succeeding generations of artists.

ABOUT THE WORK

The genesis of Carrie’s hollow form “touchstones”, began with a simple sheet of metal - ‘the matrix’. This base metal often consisted of precious metals, fine and sterling silver 14K, 18K or 22K gold or Japanese alloys such as shakudo, or mokume gane. Next, she cuts into the matrix and filled it with 18K gold solder to create linear patterns, or she overlayed her matrix with additional strips of metal to achieve a collage effect.

Patterns of overlay metal were achieved by deeply compressing the metals into each other with a rolling mill. When the sheet was complete, its shape was formed by hammering into a Plexiglas mold. After sawing the shape out and trimming the edges, two half beads were soldered together with a lining and tubing inside to facilitate threading.

Highlights were achieved by hand burnishing and texturing selected areas. Up to 26 layers of metals might be found in a single touchstone.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

1998, ‘Knock on Wood’ National Invitational, National Ornamental Metals Museum, Memphis TN
1998, ‘A Testament to Diversity’, NM Invitational, Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos NM
1993-4, ‘Gold & Silver’, Invitational, American Craft Museum, New York, NY

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

1998, JCK’s Luxury – “Luxury: Tomorrows Hot Auction Lots’
1998, Lapidary Journal, “Confessions of Jewelry Artists”
1996, Lapidary Journal, “Sky-high Goldsmiths”