Featured Artist: Stacie Pate

Tell us your name, your Etsy shop name, and what city you live in.
My name is Stacie Pate. My jewelry shop name on Etsy is staciepate.etsy.com & my supplies de-stash shop name is stargazersupplies.etsy.com. I live on the west side of Cleveland with my husband and two dogs, Daisy and Dewey.

What is your first memory of making jewelry? Did someone teach you, or did you learn on your own?
Long-winded story but the gist of it is that in high school in the late 80s my sister and I were very into the whole hippie/love bead thing. Okay, we really just wanted to replicate the necklace in that one famous Jim Morrison picture (the red, white, black, and blue one). Living in a small town, not having craft stores, not to mention the lack of internet, we experimented with fishing line and (unwaxed) dental floss. We got the seed beads by the hank at a muzzle loading shop in Lodi, Ohio. Soon after, we started collecting all sorts of different materials (vintage buttons from my grandma, shells, holey stones from the beach, you name it). My sister didn’t really stick with it. I think she just strung petrified things on leather for a bit. I, on the other hand, discovered Bead Paradise in Oberlin in 1991 (when it was over the co-op book store) and I continued to make stuff. I used to give jewelry to my favorite musicians when I went to concerts. At least one of my necklaces rode around the world in my friend Dave’s bass drum while he was a member of Pearl Jam.

I was totally self-taught. Totally trial and error. A lot of trials. A LOT of errors!

What is it that draws you to your craft material?
I absolutely LOVE rocks! I love their energy, their colors, their textures . . . everything (except when they’re poorly drilled)! In high school I also started becoming interested in metaphysical properties of gemstones. I’ve collected beach glass and holey stones since I was a kid. It was a natural progression.

I also love to shape metal. I stopped doing metalsmithing a few years ago but hope to go back to it, possibly on a larger scale. I love making boxes and would love to make sculpture or learn welding and do some ornamental ironwork. I’ve always been very drawn to the tiny tiny detail work, but lately I’ve just really had the desire to make things on a larger scale (and pound the crap out of stuff).

How would you describe the style of your work? Does it reflect your personal style?
My work is pretty simple and down-to-earth. Totally my personal style in that it’s straight-ahead and down-to-earth, but I’m still trying to find my total personal style. The weird thing is I don’t really like to wear jewelry. I have a few favorite pieces, and with the exception of one necklace (the one I wore when I got married), they’re all very simple.

What are your inspirations? How do are they expressed in your work?
My biggest inspirations are color and nature. Mostly color. I like to evoke an emotion  through color (or I like to think I do, haha!). I have a goal to be more daring with color. I feel I tend to play it safe, yet one of the compliments I hear the most is my choice of color . . . go figure!

Do you have an all-time favorite creation? What about it makes it your favorite?
Three favorites:

• My wedding necklace (because it’s my wedding necklace, and it’s PINK).
• A simple chain I made with a Buddha pendant (still a work of progress but I can’t decide which stones, if any, to add to it but I love the energy of the pendant and have been coveting it for over five years).
• A simple wire-wrapped beach glass pendant on a chain (because wearing it reminds me of being at the beach in Vermilion when I was four or five years old, looking for beach glass and shells, and I haven’t stopped).

When did you realize that this was more than a hobby?
When people were buying my stuff off my body and stores were asking if they could sell my stuff. I wasn’t prepared for that (still not)!

Describe your workspace.
It’s a mess! Actually, I prefer to work on my lap. My shoulders don’t appreciate it, but I just like to take my wire and beads into the living room and make jewelry while sitting on the couch watching a movie or something. We moved into our house almost three years ago and we still haven’t set up the workshop in the basement. I drill beach glass wherever I want to. In the summer that happens to be on the front porch, only because I like to hang out on the front porch.

What is your favorite task related to your work? Your least favorite?
My favorite task is making stuff and coming up with new stuff. My least favorite is cleaning and tagging and pricing and taking pictures. I like shopping for new supplies too!

Do you have artistic talents in other areas?
I can play the clarinet and back in my late teens/early 20s I played  guitar in heavy metal/punk bands. Um, on second thought, that might not be “talent” (no offense to the music; I still loves me some Fugazi, but . . . I think there’s a reason why it didn’t “stick”!). I do enjoy the clarinet though. I sold off most of my guitars years ago. I keep threatening to take up the bass (that was always my dream anyway) and start another band but I have enough hobbies right now! I also have managed to make procrastination an art form.

Tell us something about you that we might be surprised to hear.
That I used to play guitar in really marginal heavy metal and punk bands in the late 80s/early 90s?

Where can we find your work?
www.staciepate.com, Etsy, Local Girl Gallery on Detroit in Lakewood, Anju Salon on S. Kensington in Rocky River, and Antique Corner on Center Ridge Road (beach glass) in Westlake.