We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lisa Vinnik. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lisa below.

Lisa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Silversmithing is a challenging task! I love jewelry, I love art, and the gap between my expertise level and my expectations of what I want to create can cause a fair amount of angst for me! I know what I want to create and often times, I’m just not there yet! This is the beautiful part of being an artist! It so naturally follows any learning we have in life about anything that is important. Stay in your own lane. Avoid the comparison game. Be a learner. Give yourself oodles of grace. Be okay with it not being perfect. Don’t listen, look at, pay attention to others except in a small way to learn. All these are truisms for a life well-lived. The studio is a great place for me to practice this on a daily basis. Sometimes I win at it. Often times, I get sucked into the abyss and have to do some work to crawl back out. It’s definitely a journey! But one I willingly and lovingly take on, with the support and grace of my family and truest of friends!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am originally from Minneapolis, but am now almost a Colorado native since I’ve been here for about thirty five years. I come from a large, creative, hard-working family and am lucky to be close to all of my brothers and sisters. My father was a clothing buyer for a large department store and then owned a line of clothing stores in Minneapolis and St. Paul. We always loved fashion and clothing as kids, nothing high-end, but definitely loved the feel of a warm wool sweater, some cool, brightly colored tennis shoes, and some jewelry to round out the ensemble.

I have been a teacher for my whole life, lots of it in some really challenging environments, and at some point, decided to start making jewelry as a way to offer a little love to my hard-working colleagues. They always appreciated it and encouraged me to keep going. After awhile, I got tired of the pendants and beads I found in stores and online and decided to take an introductory silversmithing class as a way to begin to offer more organic, one-of-a-kind pieces. I instantly fell in love with the craft! I was able to slowly build up my tools and equipment, enough so that I created a studio space in my garage. That’s still where I call “home”—it’s nothing fancy, but I love the ease of walking right out the door to be able to create. Plus my sweet yellow lab Zoe loves to hang out with me in the garage and greet every passerby with a wag of her tail! I recently retired from full-time teaching and love that I have more time to work on jewelry, exploring the art in news ways and learning a ton!

My work has always been a reflection of what I see in nature, either by creating organic lines with a technique called fusing, choosing beautiful stones to work with, or repetitive patterns, circles, and lines. I still have so much to learn! I have taken more classes with the same studio I started with, but also some private and semi-private lessons with a local jeweler, as well as being a part of an online academy for silversmiths. My goal is to create a comfortable, casual boho style that has a bit of funk to it. I want people who wear my jewelry to feel that they are wearing something unique, a piece of art on their body.

The jewelry people wear often has a deep meaning behind it-a gift from a loved one during a particularly difficult or happy time. It might be a piece bought to mark a joyous time-the birth of a baby, a birthday, or an anniversary. Or conversely, jewelry can help us navigate the hard times like the death of a close friend or relative, a divorce, or when someone close to us moves away. Jewelry helps us remember who we are and how we got here. I make pieces to help people celebrate, grieve, love, show pride, and just add a special something to their everyday living. When I see people wearing my jewelry, the thrill is amazing!

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

We as a society love the arts! We love our music, our plays and movies, our trips to art museums and concerts and ballets. We get engrossed in novels and enjoy gorgeous flowers, and yes, jewelry! Art fuels us, reminds us of who we are, challenges our thinking. and teaches us empathy for others. We would be lost without art. Art does all this for us, and yet we as a society often only reward those that “make it”. We often forget that every artist, every person who “makes it” has been on a journey their whole creative life. They’ve struggled, lived with the stress of low wages, side gigs, back-breaking hours, the lack of faith from families and friends. But the artists that have had “success” are just a small percentage of artists out there working. We need to improve funding on a local, state, and national level to support these artists. We need to not just go to Broadway plays, but go to small local theaters. We need to listen to new, upcoming musicians, and support small local businesses where artists thrive. Artists and their work are invaluable to us and we need to support them with our purchasing power at a grassroots level.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The best part of being an artist is that I get to go back to being an eight year old in elementary art class! I get to go out to my studio, mess around, experiment, see what works, what doesn’t. I get to be curious and be a learner every single day. Working with my hands, creating wearable art, and then seeing others enjoy that art is an unbelievable high! I feel so grateful that I have a life where doing this works. I am super grateful to my husband for his support and willingness for me to explore this venue and just keep learning!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://etsy.com/shop/vinnikdesigns
• Instagram: @vinnikdesigns_handmadelove

Image Credits
Hannah Peterson