Sharece Phillips is an artist, jewelry designer, poet, Aquarian and creator of SHA - RECE designs. Devoted to mysticism and exploration, her pieces are artifacts from civilizations of her own creation. Celestial geometries formed in balls of pearl and thin silver, asymmetrical rotations of red coral and brass are her way of communicating and connecting the body and mind.
SHA-RECE, depicts a fluid tension within dualities, exemplified by her most recent series STATERA. Asymmetric earring sets bring physical awareness to the wearer and polished tuning forks celebrate the search for harmony.
How did you get into jewelry making?
I have always made objects and originally went to art school for ceramics. Jewelry making became a way to balance the work I was asked to do. I made pieces out of found objects: pine needles, pine cones, and leaves. I would cover them in resin and see what happened. I loved making mindful objects that didn’t have a purpose other than to hold pockets of energy that came from a lot of time and effort. But it wasn’t until I moved to Seattle that I took a basic metals jewelry class at Pratt.
Pieces from the SHA - RECE STATERA collection.
Can you talk about your most recent series and what these pieces mean to you?
Statera is a Latin term for balance and the series came from balancing all of my emotions, particularly my thoughts on being a designer.
I wish there was a part of me that could find a balance between pure intuition and knowing when a piece is correct. My process is play, and sometimes you have to sit in that moment and take whatever the universe will bring you.
My mom raised me pagan and I’m extremely woo-ey. I think it’s like a tuning fork trying to find pitch. There is the moment where the vibrations are colliding and reach equilibrium; I want to do that visually.
On craft versus art…
Ceramic artists were able to break the barrier between craft and fine art, where the function [of a piece] is no longer necessary. I want that to happen for jewelry and in some ways it is. It can do more than just hang on somebody; it is a tool to communicate in an indirect way.
I hope to have my work be seen as one other step, or person, trying to push jewelry forward to be seen as contemporary art as opposed to contemporary craft.
Jewelry is considered decorative -- what role does beauty play in your form making? Is that a consideration?
I want to say yes and then absolutely not. Because I think: what defines beauty? It takes a lot of forms. Most of life is bloom and decay— the beauty is the time passing. Redefining beauty is what jewelers have to do in order to move forward with it.
What forms inspire you//where do you find your inspiration for your work?
I don’t know if I can pinpoint it, it comes from everywhere. If I find a form resonates with me, there is that intuitive understanding. If I feel like something is sacred, I pay attention to it. It’s a song, it’s a poem, it’s a shadow on the street. It comes from nature and maybe that collision between man-made forms (simulated forms) and organic forms.
Do you tend to create in collections or are pieces singular? Ideally, I try to adopt the printmaking process, where I would make 100 of one design, and for the most part I’ve followed up on that but I’ll find that a couple of samples here and there that I just don’t create again because I find that the object didn’t work or didn’t resonate with me.
I think divergent thinking is very much a necessary part in the full timeline of creating a body of work, but it’s only one section of it. In order to bake a cake, you gotta start with the ingredients and bake it of course, but then you have to decorate, eat it, clean up after. All of that is a part of the same process.
What is it about metal?
I’m attracted to natural elements and I didn’t consider how much life is in metal until using it. Similar to wood, it’s still such a mystery for me. The way it melts, forms. I think I was most attracted to it because I didn’t know anything about it.
