Fall/Winter 2006 - Mendocino Art Center

makingbeautiful ewelsAlmost fortyyears ago Jimahad a store onHollywoodBoulevard, buyingand sellingthings from localartists. He thenwent through aphase of trying tomake things for the store, out of leather, “Hollywood”stuff, lots of fringe. He had played a little with beadsand wire, but one day he started beating on a piece ofbrass wire with a claw hammer, on the cement floor ofthe back room, and became entranced.In 1966, in Hollywood, if you called something“hand made,” somebody would buy it. Jima beganbeating on lots of brass wire and said, “This is fun, let’sbeat on silver wire.” He got a torch and it wasn’tvery long until playing with the metal was even morefascinating to him than beinga storekeeper in Hollywood.That became his new direction.He and his wife had beento Mendocino a couple oftimes and had becomemomentarily infatuated withit, but they had always goneback and got into their liferhythms. They lived in different places: Ojai, L.A.,Berkeley, then for twenty years in Nevada City.They made their living as jewelers and have hadside-by-side workbenches for close to thirty years. Theysold much of their jewelry by traveling to art shows allover the West Coast and the Southwest.They took their first jewelry class, a cold connectionsclass from David La Plantz, at the Mendocino ArtCenter in 1996. “We spent a week in a little cabin acrossthe street from the Art Center in a yard of flowers witha view of the ocean, went to the bakery, and walked onthe headlands!”After the class, while driving back to Nevada CityCarlie said, “Wow! It sure is neat there! Wonder what itwould be like to live there? You know, we should gothere, rent a house for a year and see what it’s like!”Which was exactly what they did. That was ten yearsago. It was the first time they had made a radical movein twenty years, but everything clicked into place. “Wefound a house in Caspar. It felt like we were beingmoved, like coming to Mendocino was the next step inour lives.”Over the years, Jima taught many people how tomake jewelry in his studio. He had played with the ideaof teaching larger groups to make jewelry, but at thetime there was no opportunity. “I saw that an opportunitywould exist in Mendocino. That was one reason Iwanted to move here and I actually got involved withthe Art Center really fast!”jJima Abbott10