Featured Artist: Karen Utiger

By Janelle Faignant

Pliers, hammers, torches, wire and saws are her tools but Karen Utiger is not a carpenter. 

First she spent a decade making functional pottery — mugs and bowls, espresso cups, plates and pitchers. Then she learned how to fuse glass, but found it wasn’t as much fun.

“The kiln does most of the exciting work for you,” she said over coffee one Friday morning. Then she discovered silver clay, which can be manipulated like pottery clay but it’s made of silver particles. “Then I took silversmithing classes and that was it.”

After a couple classes and some YouTube videos she made the switch from making pottery to making jewelry. It had all the elements she loved, “hammering and fire and everything,” and most importantly, “I get to do it all with my own hands,” she said.

Her studio, called Lyon Pond in Peru, is full of inspiration, surrounded by nature, where she makes everything from glass jewelry to spinner rings, mixed metal pieces, paperclip necklaces, double dangling hoop earrings, collections of bracelets, stackable rings and so much more, like a small silver Vermont-shaped pendant on a chain, or a silver bracelet with a heart. Since they’re all handmade, “every one’s a little different,” she said.

It sounds almost surgical when she describes how the heart bracelet was made — “I saw out the heart first. It’s copper. Then I have to hammer it, file it to make the edges smooth, solder with a torch onto the hammered silver band and then I shape it.”

There are other tools, mandrels for shaping bracelets and rings, wire cutters.

“It is a lot and it’s very physical,” she said. “If you break your wrist like I did a couple years ago it’s really hard to do anything. You have to do it all one-handed.”

Sometimes she knows what she wants to make when she starts a piece, other times the material tells her.

“When I fuse glass stones or other stones, sometimes it’s the stone that tells me what to do,” she said. “If you look at something you get an idea if it should be chunky or refined. Then I look at the other pieces of silver that I have and decorative wires and decide what might work with what.”

“I draw some things out, but a lot of times it’s laying everything out together like a puzzle.”

And one of the great things about jewelry making is that you really can’t make a mistake.

“You can fix most anything. And if not, you can melt it down and do it again,” she said.

“I love making things with my hands – quilts, beaded jewelry, music, pottery,” she says on her website. “I still carry around the first pinch pot made as a child.”

“Art has always been a part of my life somehow,” Karen said. “I’ll take a class every now and then to learn new techniques. There’s always something you can do to learn.”