The Sheltering Tree: Susan McIlwain Sumak Designs
Time for a brief sojourn, so I glide down and light. I have found a place in a tree known as the smooth sumac. It is a sheltering tree, providing safe harbour for many wild creatures - birds, insects, small mammals. The sumac produces nectar for bees. In the fall its colours change to orange and yellow, finally settling into a deep red. That is when it bejewels itself with fuzzy red berries providing late winter sustenance for evening grosbeaks, northern cardinals and ruffed grouse.
Jewellery designer Susan McIlwain calls her studio Sumak Designs. She says if she were a bird she would be one of the corvids:
I would be a crow or a raven, because they are observant and like to steal shiny objects.
Susan’s market booth will be filled with shiny objects. Her market booth is the place the flock will find pieces - like the sumac - as delicate as leaves and as chunky as berries. There will be earrings, bracelets, bangles, necklaces, charms and gems:
One of my signature pieces is a textured chain link necklace. The collection of chains vary in diameter and length with different textures on the link. Within each collection I create a bracelet and earrings to match the necklace design.
Susan says her pieces are a kind of edgy and colourful art with each one telling a story that starts with Sumak Designs and is completed by the woman who wears it:
I create jewellery that has soul and inspires others to feel something magical.
And then Susan immerses herself in her work:
When I spend time at my studio workbench and I bring those ideas out from my heart and translate them in the form of metal ... that process of creation makes my heart sing.
Sumak Designs will be setting down roots at Proutopia: Birds of a Feather June 8th & 9th. See the links below for tickets and times.
Feeling much restored,
Wendy King p.p. (pigeon post)
PROUTOPIA LINKS
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