We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nora Feldman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Nora, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I have always been driven by creativity. As a child, I was a homebody who filled absolutely every free moment with creative endeavors: I filmed short movies and TV commercials, wrote and performed songs, created dynamic multi-person dance routines, painted and drew in front of the TV, made cards and gifts with random bits and bobs in a craft bucket full of things my mother couldn’t throw away, designed brochures for imaginary businesses, built and decorated elaborate Sims homes instead of actually playing the game; I scrapbooked, wood-burned, rock-tumbled, sewed, painted nails for pennies on the sidewalk…I even took up knitting UW Badger scarves to sell on the street to football game-goers. But the thing I did most often was…make jewelry! I had (still have in my parents’ basement) an extensive collection of beads and findings that I would craft into earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and anklets on my living room floor to the background murmur of the TV. “Beading” was always the first activity offered up to friends who came over and we would spend hours on our creations. Like the scarves and nail painting, I occasionally tried to sell my jewelry on the sidewalk in front of our house to passersby—though my clientele was limited to the occasional kind neighbor.
My passion for jewelry making didn’t evolve from beading on my parents’ living room floor into metalsmithing until I took a very introductory summer art metal workshop while I was in high school. The following school year, I took an open-ended art metal class at my high school and then TA’ed the class the next year, which just meant I didn’t have to follow a syllabus and could work on whatever projects I wanted. I absolutely loved dabbling in the craft and fabricating my own creations in metal, but never thought of it as potential career path. My whole life, I dreamed of being an artist but could never commit to a single art form. Even if I knew which art form to choose, I was never convinced that I’d be able to make a living as an artist, so art was relegated to a hobby in my mind.
However, I knew I wanted to continue pursuing art metal as a hobby; when I moved to Chicago, I chose the area I wanted to live in based on its proximity to an art metal studio. Once I moved, I took another brief open-ended course at a nearby studio, but it wasn’t until COVID hit, the studio closed, and I lost my job due to pandemic that I started buying my own tools, creating my makeshift studio in my kitchen and back porch, and diving headfirst into metalsmithing. It was then that I realized this is what I wanted to do this every day for the rest of my days.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a mostly self-taught metalsmith who lightly dabbled in the craft since a summer workshop before high school in 2008. It wasn’t until the universal pause of quarantine and I lost my job due to the pandemic that I bought my very first tools and dove into jewelrymaking headfirst. Jeweler’s saw in hand, I swiftly realized that this was what I wanted to do every day for the rest of my life–and Metalhead Jewelry was born!
My style is still a mixture of many things; It is bold, dark, rough, rustic, industrial, extraterrestrial, medieval, edgy, and rough around the edges with a touch of elegance, regality, and femininity. I think that a lot of my work looks like ancient artifacts excavated on an alien planet that could have belonged to a warrior princess. I love creating big statement pieces with a lot going on. My internal drive pushes me to create designs that have not been created before, which gives my work a complete uniqueness that is something my customers are drawn to. I feel that each piece has a unique voice of its own and lives in a world of its own, but that all of the worlds still look uniquely mine.
I fabricate all of my one-of-a-kind wearable art by hand in my makeshift home studio (also known as the “kitchen” and “back porch”) with a lot of heart, hard labor, and rusty tools. Each piece typically takes me 16-24 hours to create and I am solely responsible for the design, creation, photography, and marketing of every single piece. No matter how hard I work, I can’t work fast enough; If there were two of me with six arms each, I could sell enough jewelry to make a living, no problem! Since I don’t have either of those things, I find myself working 10 hours a day and still only producing two pieces a week. I know that I could produce more inventory by reusing designs or making less-elaborate pieces but that’s just not what my heart wants. What gets me giddy is creating big, complex, one-of-a-kind pieces that look like something I’ve never seen before and only just imagined. I might change course one day to make things easier on myself, but this is how I choose to work for now. I do hope to get into casting to create a line of replicable, smaller pieces that I could sell in addition to my one-of-a-kind hand-fabricated pieces.
My biggest accomplishment has been starting to make a real, somewhat livable income off jewelry. My whole life, I doubted that I could ever make an income as an artist. To be close to making that a reality, though hard-fought, is an incredible feeling. I still work part-time in Graphic Design and Social Media Management because I love to travel and visit family, and metalsmithing is not portable. Therefore, having a revenue stream that I can earn remotely is still important for me right now. We shall see what the future holds!
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is seeing something you dreamt up in your mind physically manifest in front of you–to start with a wild idea and no clue how to get it done and somehow pull it together with your own physical labor and problem-solving from start to finish. Then to see your piece resonate with strangers enough for them to actually purchase it–pure endorphin-inducing bliss!
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
In my ideal world, I would love to see some sort of Universal Basic Income implemented for all people so that no one has to feel like they live to work and can follow their passions, creative or otherwise, without breaking their backs. I fear, however, that this is a long way away so, for now, I think that the best way to support artists and creatives is to 1. follow them actively on social media. Likes, comments, and shares go such a long way and it is something you can do for free. 2. If you have the means, purchase handmade art for what it’s worth. Handmade art is more expensive but that’s because it takes tons of skill, time, and vision to execute.
Contact Info:
- Website: metalheadjewelry.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/metalheadjewelry
- Facebook: facebook.com/metalheadjewelry