Naomi Sarna
"Not only am I an artist, but I'm a psychoanalyst and a medical hypnotist and in psychoanalysis, your earliest memories are considered very important. My earliest memory is making something with clay with my hands and as I was making this little thing, a little horsey or a cow or whatever it was. I was maybe four years old and I, I was thinking to myself, this is wonderful. It wasn't that I thought my horse was so beautiful. It was the process of making something with my hands that I enjoyed so much. That has really defined my entire life. I work with my hands, I create art with my hands, and someone wants to ask me what my most important tool was my favorite tool. And I said, my hands. So there's this compulsion, one might say, or drives that I have to create things that allow me to use my hands, I'm at this time, I'm a gemstone carver and high jewelry maker. But I'm also a master knitter, crocheter, and classical marble carver, as well. So art has been very important throughout my entire life, as a little girl, learning how to knit and sew and crochet and do all sorts of very traditional crafts, like calving and hairpin lace. If you could do it with your hands, I was eager to do it," said Naomi Sarna, an international award-winning jeweler.
Naomi started crafting jewelry at a very young age. She would walk around her neighborhood selling her pieces and that is where her passion stemmed from.
"Watching a plumber, soldering some types together, I found the flow of the solder to be very fascinating. The tool that he was using to heat to solder was all really interesting. And like I'd say, we just learned how to do things because we needed to know how to fix things. In terms of going to school, I did attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia for three years and I went to do classic sculpture carving. And that was, I would say, my most concentrated time, of studying art, but it had nothing to do at that time, with making jewelry. Jewelry came much, much later. I would take a week-long class at 92nd Street. I learned how to do metal forming with a few wonderful teachers, in a very, very wonderful place. But like I say, it would be maybe a week or a year, because, at that time, I was raising my two children on my own. I had gone into the food business because that was what I really knew how to do but I really wanted to be a starving artist. I knew that I could cook well and I started selling my cakes. Then I got into large-scale catering and I specialized in parties for over 1000 people. That was very consuming work for quite a number of years. At the same time, I was also going to school to become a psychoanalyst and I didn't really have time to make jewelry. I looked at a lot of jewelry books, I have a very fine art collection. Finally, I sold my food business which was called Montana Palace, and became a full-time psychoanalyst. That's when I have a little more time to start making the jewelry. And again, I would take a class here, a class there. Then about 20 years ago, my husband died very unexpectedly and I started going out to Alan Reveres School in San Francisco. I took a class that was really quite pivotal with Bernd Munsteiner, he had never taught in the United States before. When I saw that he was teaching a class, I immediately signed up for it, there were about 10 of us in that class. It wasn't that I learned his style. But his attitude was very important to me. He said, to find beauty in anything. If there are inclusions in the gemstone material, aren't they beautiful? And so, if you look at any of my work, you'll see that almost without exception, my work is very curvy. So like I say philosophically, he had a great influence on me," said Naomi.
With Naomi's background in working with curved line gems, the piece that she was given for the Big Reveal project was quite a challenge as it was clean and straight. But she ended up putting together a beautiful piece inspired by nature, the ocean.
"These are waves. I'm, even though I was born and raised in the mountains, I would rather be on the ocean and for me, the most perfect place to be is on a boat in the ocean. So many, if not almost all of my pieces, have these waves like healing, water flowing, that kind of thing. So I created this ring with the Green Tourmaline, MMS, and I surrounded it with yellow 18 karat yellow gold. Then the waves of different colors of tourmaline, green and pink. There are a few diamonds on it and I think of it as sort of Neptune's treasure tourmaline because it's coming out of the water. Very unusual setting, coming out of the water, out of the waves," said Naomi.
Tune in to learn more about Naomi's journey as a maker and if you would like to purchase a ticket to attend the Big Reveal event on Saturday, October 8th, click here.
Please visit Naomi's website to see more of her work.
To see Naomi'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.