Patricia Daunis
"Well, I grew up in Auburn, Maine, and at 10 years old, I announced to my mother, I was going to the Rhode Island School of Design to be a fashion designer. I have no idea where I'd ever even heard of Rhode Island School of Design. But anyway, I did. And then, growing up in Maine, in those years, there was no art after sixth grade. So I took classes wherever I could. And anything in school from mechanical drawing to whatever was holding a pencil and or a paintbrush. So then I decided I did get into RISD but I knew I had to have a job when I got out. And I love math. And I love physics, and I loved art and that with architecture, so I decided to go into architecture. Then I went to RISD. And the first year, I walked around, you didn't have to declare a major and I realized architecture wasn't a good fit. So I went into textile design because that guaranteed a job in New York City. Being a kid from Maine, that sounded just great. So I went to that, and it just didn't fit either. It was not right at all. So but I'm really good at rendering wallpaper. But so um, next door was the metal shop and there was somebody in there casting metal with metal and fire and centrifugal force machines. There was somebody hammering a sheet of copper into these undulating forms and they were all graduate students, they only had a graduate program. Long story short, I just said, I'm never going to leave. I'm going to stay here. So let's work it out. And so ultimately, they did. So I was one of the first undergraduates because I wouldn't go. And I just thought, you know, I don't know how I'm going to have a job after this. But I'm gonna learn something in this and it was just magic to me. It was just magic. It was and it was art. And it was math. And it was physics and all the things that I love and fashion to wow, that's sort of how I ended up there. I mean, I just, I just truly stumbled upon it," said Patricia Daunis.
Patty Daunis is a remarkable artist that has been in the craft of jewelry for quite some time. She has taught at renowned universities and then went full-time in growing her own business that she was dabbling into part-time when she was teaching.
"Giving up the steady paycheck and benefits was hard. In 1981 interest rates were almost 20% and that was just for business. And gold was never as high as it was, then. It's certainly higher now. Silver was $40 an ounce. It has never been that high since then. The Hunt brothers were trying to corner the market. It was a really stupid time to start it. But I did it," said Patty.
She grew her customer base substantially when she started getting her name out there through awards programs and such. Her style is very artistic as she uses materials you would never hear of when putting together jewelry.
"I like to work with metal or other materials to get a three-dimensional form. I find when I draw, I can almost tell when a drawer draws that design because there's a front and a back, but it doesn't turn the corner. In sculpture, that's what you're looking at, you're looking at a sculpture, if it's a torso, you know, you're looking at how the muscles go around to the back or how, and that's all important. That to me is a very important thing in jewelry. Yeah. And so it's not like this ring. The front is pretty, but the back is pretty. How it all connects is important as well. Make sense? So those are things or earrings are another place where you can be incredibly three-dimensional, right? Because there's so much space here. So I find that I can create forms that I could never think of drawing if I did them on paper with a pencil. So you know, I mean, how do you draw a form like that over there in the park? And sometimes I'll take a simple form like that started out as a circle with a cut. It's several circles with cuts put together and hammered into that shape. So my oval and then a tan shaped into that kind of flower. I get a lot of metal smithing in it. It's got a lot of art. It's got a lot of math in it. Yeah, a lot of physics. It's kind of like small architecture. But then other things here are tick wax and wove it. So you see I've got these woven pieces. So that stint in textile design was not totally lost. But I use wax to weave instead of metal because it gives a softer look nice got more than something," said Patty.
Tune in to learn more about Patty's process behind her Big Reveal piece and much more.
Please visit Patty's website here.
To see Patty’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.