EA 2021 FALL 05 @grstools HOW DID YOU FIRST BECOME INTERESTED IN ENGRAVING/JEWELRY/STONE SETTING? This is my long-winded answer to how I became interested in engraving, jewelry, and stone setting. I was pretty involved in music culture in high school and college. I played piano growing up and was really attracted to the live music scene at a young age. The first time I saw the band Sound Tribe Sector 9 was at the second Bonnaroo in 2003. I remember walking up to the show and having an eye-opening experience. The way everyone there danced, styled their clothes, and showed a sense of community really resonated with me. This was also the first time I saw a wire wrap and little did I know at the time that wire wrapping would be the catalyst that started my career in jewelry and engraving. Years later, after hundreds of concerts in the jam band scene, I realized that my position in the community could be more than a fan. This is when my whole mental attitude shifted and I realized if I wanted to be a creator in my beloved music culture, I had to begin creating. Not only creating for fun but getting serious on one skill set. I had been dabbling in many different creative outlets, but wire wrapping was my favorite. I decided to focus all my energy into it. I truly believe the more you put into something the more you get out of it, and this life lesson proved to be true with wire wrapping. I found a community of jewelry artists who lifted one another up, and through metalworkers.org we were able to share our jewelry with like-minded people throughout the country. This was before social media, so metalworkers was it for us! There was definitely healthy competition within the community along with support. Some of the more supportive friends I made encouraged me to level up my jewelry skills beyond wire wrapping and this is when I started looking towards more traditional jewelry making techniques and engraving. HOW DID YOU LEARN THIS SET OF SKILLS? WHAT TRAINING HAVE YOU PURSUED? Around 2010 I went to North Seattle Community College, learned some basic jewelry making skills like soldering, basic fabrication, wax carving, casting and stone setting. I used these skills in my artwork along with wire wrapping for a few more years and then found out about GRS. I was in the second-year class of folks in my metalworkers.org community. Basically just saw what the first group learned and then another group of us decided we had to go as well. Shoutout to Adam Caver for leading the pack on that first custom class with Todd Daniels at GRS. I proceeded to take two more classes at GRS including one with Sam Alfano and one with Rex Pederson. Learning to work with GRS tools was a huge motivating factor in excelling my artwork to the next level. Sam encouraged us to learn to draw in Procreate and now this is one of my biggest assets in my business. After all the amazing things I learned at GRS, I still craved more education. I guess you could say I was and am still hungry to push myself to the limit in craftsmanship. PHOTOS COURTESY DANIEL ZETTERSTROM
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