My Studio in January

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Gina Pankowski | 0 Comments

The light and colors of Seattle are primarily dim and soggy grey in January. What I love about this time is that it gives me a chance to relax post-holiday and hunker down to plan my creative output for the year.

I’ve been studying, sketching and collecting. Diving into stacks of books on gems and gemology. Learning about everything from the lore of healing properties of many gems to details of identifying the different gem mineral groups and their physical qualities like hardness and what makes them unique is so much fun. Particularly fascinating to me are crystal irregularities like the silk inclusions in sapphires that create a star effect. You can see an example in the rare yellow star sapphire at the bottom of the necklace in progress photo.

Color and patterns found in agates of all kinds are flooding my imagination. As you can tell in my designs I am obsessed with line and pattern! The addition of plains of color in the kinetic rings and sculptural chain designs in my collection is on the drawing board and in process.