ABOUT THE ARTIST

German-born Barbara Heinrich has been making jewelry all her life. As a small child on her parent’s vineyard, she made necklaces from snail shell, dried noodles and seeds. She knew then that she would be a jeweler.

Her training began rigorously, in a four year program at a studio influenced by Rudolph Steiner’s philosophy of jewelry making. The students worked in silence. “As nature was the jeweler’s muse, silence was necessary for the peace to speak and direct designs.”

More training followed. Heinrich earned an MFA from the acclaimed Pforzheim Academy and following more study in London, she graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology with another MFA.

After a foray into alternative materials, Heinrich returned to gold and platinum, and the design of what have become her signature works.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“I have come to realize that creating jewelry is a spiritual activity for me. It takes intense concentration of a special kind – an inner listening and seeing to conceive these gifts of jewelry in their entirety and purity. It’s like going to a secret garden; a place in consciousness where beauty and grace exist. These pieces are gifts that speak to the beauty and nobility present in all people and come from place where art, beauty, joy, grace and love are absolute realities.”

MATERIALS

Heinrich works in 18k gold and platinum, and uses an array of colored gems in her pieces. The diamonds she uses are the newly created “Spirit Cut,” which are 20% more radiant that traditionally cut diamonds.

Heinrich’s studio employs several jewelers from all over the world, in a program she developed to permit foreign artists to work and study in the United States. She encourages the exchange of ideas and excitement of an international influence in the designs she produces.

EXHIBITIONS

2007 "What Lies Beneath," group exhibition, Patina Gallery, Santa Fe, NM