My Art, Passion and Work
How I invigorate my creativity outside of work
As a driven, success-oriented professional, it’s easy to get swept up in your career aspirations and lose sight of much else. Before you know it, your job consumes you. But while that might put you on the fast track to professional advancement, you’ll also head straight for burnout – not a place anyone wants to be, no matter what career success might precede it. Before you land in that position, or if you’re already there, take a step back and remember your passions outside of work. Maybe discover a new outlet to create a much healthier work-life balance. For me, that outlet is the art and jewelry business I started when burnout reared its head in my professional life.My Art
I work with fire to shape glass and metal and to create jewelry that reflects plasticity and radiance. The practice of yoga, swimming in cold, open water and hiking in nature evoke a sense of openness, fluidity, and vibrancy that nurture my spirit and invigorate my creativity. In my artistic endeavors as a jeweler, I pursue balance through asymmetry and contrast. Each one-of-a-kind piece constitutes a whole, while simultaneously being part of a continuum in my exploration of form, color and content. In addition to jewelry, I create sculptural objects drawn from subjects that stimulate my thoughts. In contrast to the peaceful meditations that inform my jewelry designs, my sculptural art motives represent concerns for environmental and social issues that afflict our world. We find that where there is serenity in one of my jewelry designs, there is unrest in a sculpture. Also, while we encounter flow and landscapes in my necklaces, we experience resource depletion in another one of my sculptural objects. In essence, asymmetry and contrast are at the core of my abstract artistic work, and in my ongoing examination of harmony and balance. I draw from ancient flameworking traditions used in Venice, Italy, to create my contemporary abstract glass jewelry and sculptural objects. I have studied at the renowned Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Wash.; The Crucible in Oakland, Calif.; and Public Glass in San Francisco. I use borosilicate glass (Pyrex) and various metals and gems in my creations. I see myself as a multimedia artist. I also work on oil paintings, focusing mainly on the topic of climate change and the environment.
Name of piece: “Uprooted and Hanging by the Thread”
100 percent handmade and designed by glass artist and jeweler Mara Perez – www.maraperez.com Description: Anodized recycled aluminum, sterling silver, steel, Pyrex glass and Austrian crystals; black aluminum armature 9″ by 9″ and diameter of inner circle 8.5″; sterling silver bar 5″; hanging wires (top to bottom of glass elements) 18″; glass elements 1 ¼” in length. For decades, undocumented Mexicans have been uprooting themselves and crossing the Mexico-U.S. border, facing a wall, patrols and a hostile landscape. The historic failures on the part of the U.S. government to enact an effective and fair migration policy have caused millions of hardworking individuals to be left hanging by a thread in the U.S. Moreover, to cross the border and subsequently live in community and work in the U.S., Mexican migrants are forced to become invisible and live – as much as possible – as if they were transparent to avoid detection and deportation. On Jan. 28, 2013, The New York Times reported that a bipartisan group of U.S. senators has drafted a set of guiding principles for immigration reform, an initiative to be taken by President Obama and Congress in the coming months. This could lead to a path to legalization for more than 10 million undocumented migrants in the U.S., including a large number of Mexicans. History tells us that similar actions have been protracted and have repeatedly failed. Let’s hope Congress gets it right this time.
Having a doctorate in sociology with a focus on Mexican migration to the U.S., I feel very connected to this piece. I was born in Argentina and live in California. While in graduate school, I traveled to Mexico more than 20 times for research on immigration and lived there in the late 1990s. This project has enabled me to express, as an artist/jeweler, thoughts and reflections about immigration policy that I examine on a regular basis.
