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About MeHello, my name is Renee, sometimes Ivy, and Poison Ivy Designs is my brain child. I live, with my 2 cats and dog, in southeast Michigan just outside Detroit. I have my Bachelors in Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and I have been creative/artistic ever since I can remember. One of my earliest memories of such was when I was about 5 or 6 years old and I received a stuffed toy while at a restaurant with my family and when the collar the toy had on broke I raided my mother's sewing room and found ribbon the same color and width as it had been and fashioned my own collar fr the toy that i then decorated with glitter shirt paint in little dots like studs.
Next came drawing when I was about 8 years old I would borrow my brother's science fiction novels and copy pictures from the title page or borrow his comic books and copy pictures from them and blow them up larger. This phased into photography in high school which I still mess around with on occasion, in fact I still use it to do all of my own photography for my jewelry. I still mess around with many different creative fields crochet, patterning |
(for sewing), photography, drawing, and remodeling my home but the biggest part of my creative focus is on my jewelry.
The History |
In 2008 in the midst of my divorce my mother attended a home jewelry party held by a friend. This wasn't your typical direct sell jewelry this was a woman making her own pieces and selling at home jewelry parties instead of art and craft shows. My mother came home with a couple of small pieces a particular one, a pair of earrings, she showed me and said "you could probably make these", and so began my love affair, or addiction rather, with making jewelry.
The following summer I attended a local summer art fair with my mom and we stopped in one booth in particular that started my love of wire wrapping. The gentleman that was creating the pieces in this booth was using a single piece of very heavy gauge wire to wrap the stone, lock it in place, and create a bail. My mother and I each bought one of his pieces and I have, to this day, still been trying to figure out how he does what he does. I searched and searched online to see what I could find but nothing I found sparked any inspiration for me. One of my college friends, knowing what I was trying to do, sent me the link for another artists page, Jennifer Miller. I spent 3 months going back and forth to her website and looking at her images of her wire wrapped pieces trying to figure out how she did what she did before it finally just clicked. She has been my biggest influence and inspiration from the beginning. I wish I could thank her. More recently I have been drawing inspiration from both Nicole Hanna and Sarah-n-Dippity and doing some wire weaving while still continuing with my roots in wire wrapping. Knowing that jewelry seems to be the thing that every new artist is making and all of the art and craft shows are so over saturated with it I have had to make it my first priority to make sure that I stand out among the crowd. I hope I can continue to do so for a long time to come. |