Sandra McEwen

I am a glass artist creating Champleve and Cloisonné enamel jewelry on fine silver. After graduating in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, I apprenticed in glass in Italy. For many years I worked primarily in leaded glass, an experience that informs my work as a jeweler.

For each piece, there are essentially three elements I consider – lines, shapes, and colors.

I love thinking about the way lines can guide your eye to and through a piece and back again on a prescribed path of my choosing, the lines and colors combining to create off-kilter shapes that, when viewed together, seem perfectly balanced.

I revel in the actual fabrication of an object — the blade cutting silver; the fused metal glowing mellow red, then shimmering and flowing like water; the layers of enamel changing from grains of sand, to orange peel, to molten hot; the opposite and true colors fading in so slowly.

When I am creating a work of jewelry, the experience is an intimate one – I am establishing a dialog with the one person who will ultimately wear it.