Gerardo Gonzalez
"I wanted to be an artist so I went to school to study art, primarily painting those years ago. Then, over the course of my career as a student. Eventually, things started to change, and then I just sort of fell in love with the process of making miniature sculptures eventually leading into jewelry, which is what I currently try to make, I consider them miniature wearable sculptures," said Gerardo Gonzalez, fine jewelry artist based in New York City.
Gerardo has won many awards for his unique craft of using tools and gadgets you would typically see in machines and some children's toys. He uses the hand as a canvas and the skill of sculpturing to create something magnificent.
"There's a long, long process in my head, before I create something, I think of it primarily as a sculpture, that wearable aspect is sort of part of the concept. But I also have to make it go both ways. It can just be a sculpture that you can throw on your finger or vice versa. I call it sculpture, even though it can't meet both criteria. So I'm sort of in an interesting location where, you know, it could go both ways. Although I have, when I show my thesis to galleries or people in the sculpture department, they don't consider my work to be sculpture, they see it as jewelry, and jewelers think of the scope of my pieces as being sculpture as opposed to jewelry. So I'm sort of in an interesting spot, sort of kind of like that, it can lead to quite a bit of rejection from either," said Gerardo.
Gerardo had quite an interesting idea with his Big Reveal piece and the process behind it seemed complex yet worth it.
"I thought maybe I should create something more traditional. But then I felt like that would be going away from what I enjoyed doing. So then I sat there for, I don't know, hours, you can say over a course of a few days holding the stone in my hands, doing drawings, spinning it around, looking at all the things that make that stone special like inclusions, reflections, etc, with some study drawings of it. Just spinning it around in my fingers. Then in my head, I was like, it'd be cool if somebody would see this on a ring, so they could spin the stone and see it from 360 degrees at any angle they want. That's sort of what led to the mechanism that is incorporated into the piece, which allows you to spin the stone, and 360 degrees. Then also the ring incorporates a mechanism on it so the shank can be adjusted. Because in my pieces, once I pick the size, it's very difficult to go back and modify the size if it doesn't fit a person. So I've been asked a lot of times if I would be able to sort of change the size of it to fit somebody else. But changing the base can mean changing the whole look of a ring. So in this case, I did something that was you know, gives you some adjustment," said Gerardo.
Tune in to the episode to learn more about Gerardo's life prior to becoming a maker and where he sees himself going in the future.
Please visit Gerardo's website to view more of his work.
To see Gerardo’s final piece follow the Makers of the USA on Instagram and Facebook and Maine Mineral & Gem Museum on Instagram and Facebook as well as the images will be posted on both of those social media platforms.