.I carry the ocean with me.

 While on Shaw Island a few weeks ago I did a lot of beachcombing at low tide. I found beautiful perfect shells and interesting broken bits. I found myself holding onto the prefect shells, feeling the preciousness of the find. Then started to see the beautiful and intrigue of the broken and worn-down shells. The change in color and texture for time, salt water, and sun. They almost don't even look like shells. I love the questions they ask.

I'm slowing working on a little series but here is what's evolved so far. A brooch with a broken shell and a pair of earrings with almost matching shells. What a find! It was fun to play with the scale of the brooch design. Now I'm working on a necklace with broken shells. I'm really excited to see how it evolves.

.in the studio.

A new idea/creation/collection is in the works!! During my recent trip to Fundy National Park in New Brunswick I was so inspired by it's mysterious diverse vast nature I find myself still thinking about it weeks later. 

I collected some small smooth stones during low tide that I sat on my windowsil as soon as I got home. I kept thinking about how to use them and then started sketching jewelry designs. 

The first project was a brooch with a set emerald green stone. I love how it captures an element of Fundy, inspired by a stone dropping into the river sending radiating ripples. I was so captivated by Fundy for it’s diverse flora so as I continue to explore this project I will be attempting to capture a certain element of Fundy with each brooch!

I’m excited to share more as the collection continues to unfold!

exposed::vulnerable jewelry collection

I went to Portugal to study metalsmith techniques and it ended up changing my relationship with how i made art - how i want to make art but it’s always a transition to changing a relationship/habit. I came back feeling recharged and lost - like reunited with a loved one after something has happened. This is jewelry. This is my art. This is my greatest teacher. But I didn’t know how to interact with it anymore. I was frustrated to not have the same relationship - to feel like I didn’t know it/connect with it.

Mark Nepo said that anxiety is the reaction to freedom.

At the same time I came back to a home that no longer felt like a home. In the following months I had to move out of a somewhere that I called home for a year and half, which is like forever in my timeline. I met - connected and separated from people in small and deep ways. I also met someone that connected with me in a new exciting and overwhelming way - a connection that made me feel recharged and lost. A connection that would demand openness/vulnerability in a way I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.

I left the east and returned home in the west and back to the east and then the midwest and head back east for a few weeks before I got west again. With only a small backpack, 4 outfits, The Book of Awakening and jewelry supplies. The great opportunity to learn how to be human - without comforts and hideaways.

I sat down in the studio again and started to make one earrings, slowly. I made the earring and then had another idea. I kept making pieces one at a time with new ideas slowing building on one another.

The pieces weren’t beautiful in a traditional way. The pieces were rough and industrial. The pieces felt like that were showing something they should be, exposed. The pieces are made with no home - an energy of being recharged and lost - completely human. The story I am telling right now. The story I need to tell over and over again to better understand this place I am in. The story I need to tell to reconnect with this new relationship I have with my art, jewelry. The new relationship in my life that requires all the darkness, space, details, roughness to be out - to be appreciated in a way something loved only can be, completely/actively.

I hope you find these pieces to be truth-tellers, reminders that we are all on this rugged /beautiful path. I hope you find community and healing in this universal truth we are all seeking. We are beautiful/unfinished/evolving/exposed beings - looking for a home/connection/peace/purpose and the only way is through in the surrender into this moment.

You can find the new wares in the AEO shop now.

aliciaeo.etsy.com

.studio views.

I have totally fallen in love with carving wax. Here are some pictures from the studio the past few weeks, working on the next collection, connection.

.telling the story in a new way.

I've been in a jet lag haze for several days and I'm finally coming out of it. I'm excited/anxious to get back in the studio and create, start to process this time. I sat down yesterday morning with all my amazing beach stones from Lagos and started to sketch some ideas. I liked the ideas but it wasn't much different than what I had been designing before Portugal. I realized that I am ready to challenge myself more. I started to think about movement/flow of ideas. I started imagining creating a special collection of pieces incorporating the hand-selected stones from Lagos. It felt like a lot. I was hesitant to even start sketch ideas - it didn't feel right. 

Friends have asked what Portugal has done for my jewelry - has(will) it changed my jewelry? Portugal changed the way I view/interact with the process of making and designing jewelry. It reminded me of the lost element of storytelling in each piece. 

Portugal made me fall in love with with light + shadows. The story of elements: the sun + time of day + building (canvas). To me light + shadows are a reminder that all is I see is coming from within me. We are constantly reflecting ourselves onto the world, that's perspective. 

My jewelry is a story. I have to learn how to tell that story in a brand new way, that's mine to figure out how. Portugal just gave me the light + shadows to see it.

.day 30.

I've realized that my time here is to absorb - collect - be. I have so many questions and no answers. I just keep reminding myself to just be grateful for the questions and their answers will come in their own time. I'm a triple fire sign. I'm impulsive. I'm passionate. I'm social. This time here has been isolating in a really nourishing and challenging way. It's building a new awareness inside of me. On my bike ride the phrase "I reside here" came into my mind. I didn't know where it came from at first but then I realized all this time - space - solitude has made me realize how much I leap from myself. How much I reach - strive - outwards - away from myself. 

I reside here. 
A reminder to myself to stay home - right here - inside of myself.

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep and an idea, a design came into my mind that holds to essence of this truth. I'm going to sketch them out today on my commute to the studio. I'm excited to see how they evolve.

.day 9.

I made it to Faro yesterday and met with the jewelry designer/future teacher yesterday. We had a great meeting...our only trouble was that he doesn't speak English and I don't speak Portuguese but thankfully we both speak Spanish! He told me that to come back today with some pieces so he could assess my skills and create a learning plan for me. I will be taking one-on-one classes with him 3-days a week. I'm thrilled!! He is the 4th Jeweler in his family and was the Director of a jewelry design school in Lisbon for 25 years. He is serious, passionate and experienced. He told today that he can't stand commercial jewelry or the way people just copy things off of the internet. Jewelry is a process. You can't just go to the studio and start making something, art doesn't happen by chance.You have to take time to understand a concept, design something, create a model of the design and then you make the final piece. He's strict and rooted into his views - he's just the teacher I need right now. I know he is going to really guide me into this new transition for myself and my art.

So grateful.
I hope you are finding teachers in your journey.