Originally from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, Susie currently resides in Sandpoint, Idaho along the north shores of Lake Pend Oreille. Susie is wife to an adoring husband Al, and they are both doting parents to a beautiful baby girl. Susie is also an animal lover and owner of three dogs. Her family enjoys the outdoors, and they spend their winters skiing and summers cruising on the lake in their family boat.
Influenced by the aesthetic beauty of the Northwest landscape she calls home, Susie finds inspiration for her jewelry collection in nature. Susie’s pieces reflect her creative spirit and never seize to amaze family, friends, and customers with their intricate beauty. She typically works with two different mediums, Precious Metal Clay—Silver Clay and Fused Dichroic Glass.
Precious Metal Clay (PMC) is a material that was developed in Japan by artist Masaki Morikawa in the early 1990s. PMC consists of microscopic particles of silver or gold in an organic binder, which creates a flexible material for molding. Once molded to its ideal shape, PMC is heated to high temperatures in a kiln where it is fired to form solid precious metal, which is 99.9% pure. In Susie’s line of jewelry she specifically works with PMC Silver Clay, which when fired becomes 99.9% silver.
In addition to PMC Susie works extensively with one of the hottest materials being used by artisan jewelry designers today— fused dichroic glass. The distinguishing feature of dichroic glass is that it has a transmitted color and a completely different reflected color, based on the wavelengths of light that pass through it or are reflected off of it. Simply put dichroic glass displays a myriad of colors, and those colors shift depending on the angle you are viewing it from. This use of dichroic glass in jewelry design presents the customer with an absolutely one of a kind piece!
Susie is an artist who crafts her pieces by hand and is inspired by natural beauty. Her contemporary jewelry collection contains pieces, which are always original and never duplicated. We are pleased to have Susie as a member of the Bayside Jewelry family, and her work never ceases to motivate us to consider nature as a source of inspiration.