This is not your average jewelery. Creator and owner Jodi Rae Brownstein is a skilled designer, artist and metalsmith specializing in one-of-a-kind hand-fabricated creations for both women and men. Choosing materials like sterling silver, high karat golds, semiprecious and precious gems and various minerals and fossils, Jodi Rae uses diverse signature techniques to create wearable pieces that are truly unique in design.
Each piece is rendered through an intimate process combining techniques such as forging, stamping, casting, various stone-setting methods and finishing techniques including oxidation, brushed, matte and high-polish. The finished product is one that is simple in shape and symmetry yet complex in detail, much like the natural and urban worlds from which the artist takes her inspiration. "It's a very personal process," Jodi Rae says of her craft, "I create it as it comes out of me, and I feel like it becomes a sort of pure extension of myself."
The reflected similarities between the artist and her work can certainly be found in their capacity to be edgy but classic and timeless in design, soft and strong in shape and character, and endlessly versatile in context. "I am so inspired by the beauty of the forms and shapes found in nature and in our modern world," she states, "that I had to incorporate them directly into my art." Her particular affinity for different stones and minerals has led her to put elements like jasper, agate and fossils at the heart of many her creations.
"It's an adventure for me every time I start a new design;" says the artist, "I often end up in a completely different place than I anticipate, and that's an exhilarating process for me." She enthusiastically claims her aspiration to be like the visually textured stones and minerals she uses in her jewelry, comparing the complex appeal of nature's patterns to the visual story she expresses in her finished pieces. It's a story she feels is constantly evolving, like her own journey through design and concept on the path of her trade, both in the past and into the future. She is excited-along with a considerable population of dedicated Jodi Rae collectors-to see where her art will take her next.
