Melanie Merenda, artist
By Julie Ann Bell
For more than 100,000 years, humans have worn jewelry for many reasons, including adornment, protection, remembrance and healing properties. The first jewelry was made of shells, stones and bones. Today, the artists who create jewelry at Trackside Studios use fine metals, precious and semi-precious gemstones, teeth, glass, flowers, acorns, resin and more.
Linda Girardi, artist
Melanie Merenda’s Creature’s Virtue handmade jewelry line is inspired by nature symbolism, the macabre and memento mori. In the past three years, she has become most known for her work in custom memorial tooth jewelry. She works with the customer to create “one-of-a-kind pieces, using teeth a person has collected from pets, children, loved ones or themselves.” In order to “create something truly unique which can be carried for many years as a token of love,” she often incorporates birthstones and other gemstones.
“I am fascinated with coloring titanium with my torch,” says Nirado, an educator on the healing properties of gemstones and metalsmithing. She teaches at Haywood Community College, Trackside Studios and in her studio. Her current passion is her Mountain Life series with hand-cut metal mountains, bears and scenery. She experiments constantly to find new techniques. “I melt silver on copper, join metals together for a marriage of metals, broom or sand cast, engrave on the metal and more,” she says.
Nirado Sloan, artist
Linda Girardi was creating mosaics of varying sizes, but had to keep downsizing her pieces when she shared display space with her husband’s large paintings. She evolved to her current series of “mini” mosaic jewelry using ceramics, glass, beads and fine glass noodles from Italy called filato. “I really enjoy the micro-mosaics,” Girardi says. “It requires a lot more attention to detail and precision as you are working with very tiny pieces of glass.” She teaches mosaic jewelry classes at Trackside Studios and produces take-home kits for those who wish to create on their own.
As a teenager, Rebecca King loved wearing rings and was drawn to rocks and crystals. “It was a natural progression to creating wire-wrapped gemstone jewelry and cold-forged jewelry,” she says. Wire-wrapped pendants using unique stones with a nature or fantasy theme is her favorite jewelry to create. She teaches beginning wire wrapping at Trackside Studios.
Dot Williams, artist
Small landscapes incorporating flowers, stones, mushrooms and greenery in resin are the hallmark of Dot Williams’ jewelry. “When working with resin, you can feel you did all the steps correctly, but the resin has other ideas which affect the outcome of the piece. Having a background as a glass artist, I think the similarities in challenges, the rewards and the partnership of both glass and resin were what drew me to continue to use resin.”
Although our artists vary in techniques, materials and styles, they all agree that jewelry or a jewelry-making class is a fabulous gift to oneself or others.
Trackside Studios is located at 375 Depot Street, in the River Arts District. Learn more at TracksideStudios.com.
