Local Artist Plays With Element of Time

When Carol Windsor started designing earrings for her high school classmates, she expected her jewelry selling days would be short lived.

“That’s when pierced ears were coming into popularity, and there were no pierced earrings available, so I became the local supplier of my high school,” she said.  “I wasn’t planning on…that, but afterward I got more serious about it.”

Fast forward to present day: Windsor is in her 60s and preparing for San Francisco’s American Craft Council Show this weekend, during which she and more than 200 other carefully selected artists will display and sell their works in the West Coast’s largest juried show.

She’s come a long way from her high school days.

Windsor creates mostly sterling silver and paper jewelry from her garage studio behind the Burlingame home she has lived in since 1988, although she said she recently began moving in a new direction.

“That’s kind of what I’m known for,” she said of the paper and silver works. “[It’s] something that I developed and nobody else does.”

To create her jewelry, Windsor sandwiches small pieces of wire between two sheets of tissue paper molded around a petal-shaped wire. She then beats the paper down with a non-acidic white glue and paintbrush until both sides are saturated. The petals are then hung up to dry, with the internal wires and glue coating giving the paper strength.

Recently, Windsor started experimenting with replacing the small wires with painted designs as the graphic element. The painted process allows Windsor to work much faster.

“If this works it’s a technological boon,” she said.

When Windsor began making jewelry, she used wire differently, flattening the silver and creating spirals before oxidizing it dark.

Around 2000, Windsor changed the way she used wire. Her kids moved away and she began realizing how quickly time passes. She transitioned from the heavy ebony and cast beads she worked with to lightweight paper and wire petals.

“I had this sense of ‘20 years went by, I already finished that?’” she said. “I mean, life is just so quick, and I wanted that kind of ephemeral lightness to be expressed in the work.”

The petals float together in her pieces, creating a light rustling sound.

“Making it have an auditory thing makes it have an element of time,” she said. “For me it reminds me each moment’s precious.”

Windsor’s slow movement away from her well-known silver and paper work symbolizes to her a new period of her life. She said she tends to work in decades or similar sections of time.

Right now, she finds inspiration in the elegance of simplicity and said her work is evolving in that direction.

The jewelry maker first participated in the American Craft Council Show in 1980 and most recently has been showing there for six years, although she noted any year the blind jury selecting artists could reject her.

“I think it’s one of the best places on the West Coast to see better fine crafts,” she said. “It’s always fun to be in a show that you feel really good about the quality of the work.”

Windsor sells her designs for anywhere from $30 to $2,000, but said most pieces fall below $500.  She said even though her work holds a serious quality personally, she enjoys other people making a connection with it and finding the light, colorful pieces happy and whimsical. For her, the real joy is in the creation of the product.

“I like figuring things out and making stuff,” she said. “I could probably design and make lots of different things. I just sort of happened here.”

The American Craft Council Show takes place August 12-14 at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.