“Wearable Treasures Crafted from Nature” Jewelry by Carina Rossner

Viewpoints Gallery is proud to present “Wearable Treasures Crafted from Nature,” an exciting new collection of jewelry by Palo Alto artist Carina Rossner. For the past two decades, Carina has been incorporating earth’s beautiful creations into gorgeous jewelry and making wearable art. She creates her brilliant, eye-catching pieces using a challenging process of casting actual flowers and leaves into sterling and bronze in a way that preserves all the intricate textures and forms of the original flora. Carina scours the world for unusual mineral specimens and pairs them with the florals or features them in free-form designs. Her exciting new collection highlights the rainbow of colors and forms in our world – inviting us to really see all of nature’s intricate beauty. Carina’s path to jewelry-making started in childhood, when she became fascinated with minerals and spent countless days at the mineral gallery at the Smithsonian. At Harvard, she minored in Environmental Studies - mostly mineralogy - and began collecting “cool” specimens. Carina learned her jewelry skills by taking classes in the local community. Her journey began at the Palo Alto Adult School, where she learned how to string semi-precious stones and was followed by classes in lapidary (cutting and polishing rocks) at the Sequoia Lapidary Club. She quickly amassed so many specimens that she decided to turn them into jewelry, which prompted her to learn metalsmithing through Palo Alto Enjoy classes. Her passion for minerals shines through her work and her pieces are often PSAs for unusual rocks. in the rough collection.jpg (Carina Rossner's "In the Rough" collection, clockwise from center left: hemimorphite, cobalt calcite, prehnite, spessartine, malachite, rhodochrosite, tourmaline, azurite, dioptase) A decade ago, Carina developed a proprietary method of casting flowers and leaves that allowed her to create silver pieces that matched some of the more unusual mineral textures. Trying to find a good setting for a Russian charoite, she noticed that heirloom iris petals matched the flowing forms of the mineral perfectly. Casting organics is extremely difficult and doesn’t usually work because the flowers are too thin and flat and molten metal cools too quickly on contact with the mold surface. Additionally, plant matter does not burn out cleanly like the wax used in lost-wax jewelry casting (the way almost all jewelry is manufactured.) However, Carina persevered and successfully mastered the delicate technique and has been happily transforming flora into wearable art since. The first piece that she created using this technique successfully joined that pesky charoite with a delicate iris petal. Russian Iris - Russian Charoite with Iris Petal.jpeg (Carina Rossner, "Russian Iris," heirloom iris petal with Russian charoite) Carina has a workshop in her Palo Alto home and also works at the Palo Alto Art Center metalsmithing studio. Her work has been juried into national retail and wholesale shows and sold at over a hundred galleries and museum stores across the country. Carina’s work is currently available locally at Viewpoints Gallery in Los Altos. More information about Carina’s work can be found on her website, www.carinarossner.com and on the Viewpoints Gallery website, www.viewpointsgallery.com.

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Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3181950-0

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