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ike Geppetto, Kristin Lora likes to make things come
alive. In her jewelry, in her sculptural objects and art
toys, something moves. Wheels roll, carousels twirl,
things swing, wiggle around, fall down or open up, suggesting
an animation and a kind of gleeful enjoyment at how much
fun it all is. Lora herself frequently seems in motion, springing
up to show a new piece or prowling her studio, picking
up and checking a work tool, demonstrating how she cuts
metal. A good part of her life has been lived on the move.
For a long time, her
jewelrymaking ran in
tandem with a highpressure, frequent-flier
career as a corporate
executive, used to a three
hour daily commute
and routinely traveling
around the world.
While growing up, she
re m e m b e r s f a m i l y
vacations spent on
weeks-long driving
trips around the States,
Mexico and Europe.
Probably as a result of
all that momentum,
Lora says, “I have a thing
for vehicles.”
At the front door
of her spacious, artfilled home northwest
o f S a n t a Fe , t h re e
Weimaraners tumble
out in sleek charcoal
waves to offer a wellbehaved greeting. Pixel,
Zoe and Rex, joined
by their tall, trim owner,
escort the visitor
inside, then sink down
around the living
room, their streamlined
profiles set off by a
stunning collection of
contemporary sculptures, paintings, glass and ceramic pieces
surrounding them. Animal forms are everywhere, just as they
play a significant role in Lora’s jewelry repertoire, appearing in
various guises in bracelets, brooches, rings, and pendants.
They are only one of several different lines that spring from
Lora’s wide-ranging imagination. The variety and even
eccentricity of her creations reflects the artist’s own multisided
sensibility. From her wafer-thin, sterling silver circle cluster
necklaces and bracelets, through the circle links collection
and more architecturally inspired styles, to the wacky, bubbly-
feeling jewelry made with found objects and the small
sculptures and art toys, Lora’s handcrafted pieces weirdly
but affectionately riff on refrains from popular culture and
a storyteller’s sense of scenario, designed with a modern,
uncluttered sensibility.
Lora often uses the word “fascinated” to talk about what
inspires her jewelry. She will pursue something that tickles
her fancy wherever it takes her, sometimes literally. Once,
in Santa Fe, she was driving behind a cement truck and
became so absorbed in
how it was constructed
that she followed it.
“I looked at the truck
and at exactly how the
cement would come out
of the back and all of
a sudden I just knew
I had to make one,” she
says, pointing to a small
sterling cement truck
she fabricated, with a
little driver inside. Part
of the intrigue stems
from a mechanical bent
—how can she make it
move?—and part of it
arises from a passion
for collecting.
Grow i n g u p t h e
middle of three children
in Stockton, California,
Lora at the age of eight
succumbed to her first
passion, collecting beads.
In an early display of
entrepreneurial knowhow, at ten she began
stringing and selling
bead jewelry to local
beauty salons and craft
shops. Her parents
e n co u r a g e d a l l h e r
interests—Lora studied
violin and today plays
with classical music groups. In high school “there was almost
nothing in the arts I didn’t try, but I kept going back to jewelry.
I just enjoyed it. And in fact later when I started traveling,
I got into more serious bead collecting, mainly African trade
beads, which I still have.” Over the years, what has been most
crucial to shaping her singular style, she believes, is “the stuff
I’ve collected.” In her high-ceiled studio with celery-green
walls, she opens cabinets piled with plastic bins full of treasures.
“I’ve always collected found objects that I enjoy. I’ll go to flea
markets and places like the Black Hole. [A museum and store
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in nearby Los Alamos that sells castoff lab equipment and
government surplus from Los Alamos National Laboratories.
Artists love combing through it.] They can just sit there for
years. I look at them every once in a while and I know I’ll
want to make something out of them eventually. Then one day
it’s like a ‘click’ and I’ll get them out.” Boxes of glass tubing,
old ceramic insulators, colorful hand-rolled felt balls, dead
bugs, threads, vintage eyeballs used for teddy bears, ceramic
glovemaking forms, lenses and rocks wait for the limelight.
“Every time I looked at cosmetic or paint brushes, for instance,
they seemed to get prettier and prettier, maybe for marketing
reasons,” she comments. “I was just fascinated. But who wants
to stick them in a drawer? So they became jewelry.”
Lora graduated from the University of California, Berkeley
with a bachelor’s degree in zoology, intending to go into
veterinary practice. But as more of a “people person,” she
instead helped start up a couple of restaurant chains, before
earning an M.B.A. degree from Cornell in 1989. That led to
a job with AT&T and triangulating the country, living in
Florida and New Jersey before relocating back to San Francisco
as vice president of marketing and, later, vice president of
global sales. “As an outlet for stress from work, I would just sit
for hours every night and make jewelry from the beads I had
accumulated,” Lora says.
A New Jersey friend offered to sell her jewelry, and landed
several big department store orders. But Lora did not have the
time to keep up the sales side once back in California. “What
was consistent in my jewelry career was the fits and starts,” she
says ruefully.
Looking for a change from beaded jewelry, Lora enrolled
in metalsmithing classes at San Francisco State. They
transformed her craft. “When I first started working with metal,
the strangest thing was that what I had envisioned I would
make was so different from what came out of me,” Lora recalls.
“I had always admired a loose, kind of organic style where
things didn’t look so finished. And then, right away, my work
came out looking very clean. Of course I intended to make
jewelry, but the first two projects I ever made were toys. I don’t
know where that came from, but I was fascinated with
the movement, the hinges and the riveting and just everything
about the whole whimsical nature of toys. That ended
up driving me in a completely different direction than I had
ever imagined.”
Lora spent entire weekends at the metalworking studios
on campus, evolving her ideas and learning techniques.
“The teacher was great. She sat down and talked to me about
how to make the piece. [In Lora’s first project, removable
acrylic balls sit cupped on the back and tail of a sterling silver
four-legged creature on wheeled feet]. What she never
told me was that these were the most complicated parts to
construct.” Lora discovered she had no use for preliminary
drawings. “I found I was making the piece first, then
remembering afterwards I was supposed to make a drawing.
Even today if I sit down to make something I’ve already
Opposite page: CAR RING of oxidized
sterling silver and tiny train set people;
hand-fa br icated, 5.08 x 2.54 x 2.54
centimeters, 2009. Photograph b y Sar a
Stathas. TRAILER EARRINGS of ster ling
silver, garnets, cubic zir conias; handfabricated, 2.54 x 2.54 x 1.27 centimeter s,
2009. Photograph by Kristin Lora.
33 ORNAMENT 32.5.2009
CAROUSEL WEARABLE SCULPTURE of
oxidized ster ling silv er, gold, pear ls ,
crystal, train set people, tiny glass beads;
hand-fabricated, 8.89 x 10.16 x 10.16
centimeters, 2008. The sculpture spins
and comes apart so the top can be worn
as a br ooch and all of the anim als can
be worn as earr ings. Photograph by Sara
Stathas. Above: POLAR BEARS IN C AGE
EARRINGS of o xidized ster ling silver, train
s e t fi g u r e s , t i ny g l a s s b e a d s ; h a n d fabricated, 5.08 x 2.54 x 2.54 centimeter s,
2008. Photograph by Kristin Lora.
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34 ORNAMENT 32.5.2009
KRISTIN LORA working on v arious je welry pr ojects in her studio, 2007. Inset: PIXEL WEARING SILVER CIRCLE LINK NECKLA CE of ster ling
silver; hand-fabricated, 2007. Photograph by Sara Stathas . Below: ED THE SWINGING MAR TIAN, a wearable sculpture of ster ling silver,
amethysts, glass beads, test tube; hand-fabricated, 10.16 x 5.08 x 2.54 centimeters, 2007. Photograph by Sara Stathas.
worked it all out in my mind in three dimensions. I’ve worked
out all the moving parts and the scale and riveting. I never
draw anything; it doesn’t help me. I already know what it
needs to be.”
“I’ve always had an interest in art jewelry,” Lora continues.
“Even when I wasn’t necessarily thinking of it as a business,
for years and years whenever I traveled I would always search
out the local galleries in London or Hong Kong that had this
type of contemporary jewelry. But as an artist, I was never
constrained by what I saw. I found that my jewelry was
influenced by what I enjoyed about making toys, which is
how I came to three-dimensional designs.”
Along with plastic dogs and wild animals, little
people add a fillip of child-like surprise and delight to
her special three-dimensional world. They perch
on silver frame-like swings for earrings. They drive
tiny cars or sit inside a tiny Airstream camper. In one
of her newest pieces, a cross-hybridization of jewelry,
sculpture and toy, they ride a sterling silver merrygo-round (minute corgis support the base) that
comes apart to become earrings and a pearl,
gold and crystal-studded brooch. On a
commuter train bracelet—a string of little
silver carts, each holding a person —
a tiny woman opens a cell phone,
and a man sits with his forearms
resting on his laptop. “She’s
actually using a compact, and he
has his briefcase on his lap,” Lora
explains. “The older Rail King train figures
are my favorite size; they’re detailed and all handpainted.
I love the ones that wave.” Perfect for her work, Lora scoured
the internet for the figures, buying up all the vintage sets
(originally made for trains) she could find. Today MTH, the
parent company of Rail King, produces a modern version
of the figures which she uses. Lora also collects human and
especially animal plastic figures made by Preiser, a German
company. She uses a traditional bezel setting for the solidbodied animals, which are usually cut into parts, then
drills in a post from the back to secure the piece on its
mount. For the humans, Lora solders a post, then glues
each figure onto its peg.
Lora often adjusts things, cutting them up or
making changes to the surface. For other recent pieces,
she sliced up foot-long striped ceramic insulators
and used various sections in her pieces.“I sandblast
and take off the shiny finish, and I partially drill
circles or some type of shape in them and I draw
on them with charcoal, then I seal them.”
Lora handmakes all her clasp and toggles.
“The difference is in how they’re decorated
—that’s my style: those holes, and
the dots and slots. But my pieces are
never the same. Even when
they’re repeatable, like the circle
cluster line, the pattern is never
exactly the same.” Although she
makes a line of semiprecious
gemstone jewelry, usually i n v ery
minimal, matte-silver bezel settings,
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COMMUTER TRAIN BRACELET of ster ling silv er, train set f igures; handfabricated, 2.54 x 19.05 x 1.27 centimeter s, 2007. Photograph by Sara
Stathas. Inset: SWIMMER PEND ANT of o xidized ster ling silv er, glass
watch cr ystals, train set p eople, tiny Lucite balls; hand-fabricated,
5.08 x 5.08 x 1.27 centimeters, 2008. Photograph by Sara Stathas.
Lora would like to see artisans and craft gallery owners
making better use of the internet. “In this economy, I see the
craft movement needing to redefine itself,” she notes. “People
have a lot more access to the international market and to the
web. Things are less expensive if they are produced overseas,
and you get a lot of that flooding the market now.” Still, Lora
has no doubts about the survival of artisan-made work. “There’s
a segment of people who appreciate the handmade quality,
and they always will. They understand the difference.”
SUGGESTED READING
500 Pendants & Lockets. New York: Lark Books, 2008.
Cooper, Candice. Felted Jewelry: 20 Stylish Designs. New York: Lark Books, 2007.
Fauntleroy, Gussie. “Full Circle: The Art of Kristin Lora.” The Santa Fean Magazine,
Jan/Feb 2006: 48-49.
“Local art to adorn civic center.” Santa Fe New Mexican, January 15, 2008, page C-1.
Signs of Life, Magazine on Contemporary Jewelry Art and Literature. Facere Gallery,
2008.
Walker, Hollis. “Santa Fe’s Newest Power Couple.” Trend Magazine, Fall 2006/Winter
2007: 156-160.
35 ORNAMENT 32.5.2009
she is more likely to use gemstones for car head lights (cubic
zirconias) and tail lights (garnets).
Lora “swore off corporate” in the late 1990s and returned
to school full-time, taking classes in glassblowing and painting.
A telecommunications company lured her back into global
sales for another three years. “I was traveling internationally,
once a month. I didn’t even know where I was when I woke
up,” she says. The more she worked, the more obsessed she
became about taking time to be creative. “I needed that balance.
I think the advantage I had was that I wasn’t required to
sell anything I made to make a living. I was able to do what
I wanted, which really helped me define my style.” Finally
Lora and her then husband (she is now divorced) decided
they had had enough, and in 2002 they moved to Santa Fe.
As a jewelry artist represented in over forty galleries,
shops and craft shows around the country, Lora now has
a full-time assistant, but does all the designing, soldering and
forming herself. Most pieces are one-of-a-kind, and she is
constantly coming up with something new, like music boxes,
rattles and spoons, and wonderful sculptural teapots.
Another cross-hybrid, Ed the Swinging Martian, features
a cheerful, alien-looking bead-filled character that comes off
his stand and turns into a necklace. At the same time she finds
herself in demand for her corporate background. She is a
senior executive on the management team of a start-up solar
lighting venture for public spaces. She has chaired the board
of Friends of Contemporary Art, served on the boards of New
Mexico Women in the Arts and the Center for Contemporary
Arts, and since 2006 has served on the board of the Society of
North American Goldsmiths.