Jessica Bryant

"I love making custom pieces specifically for people with their own built-in quirks" -Jessica Bryant

I am Jessica Bryant, and I operate my tiny business, Snapdragon Studios, out of Tijeras, New Mexico. I've come to jewelry later on my artistic trajectory--Children's Literature and Illustration was the primary focus of my college studies, and I believe this continues to influence every one of my works, even if my medium today is different. Specifically, there is a sort of sentimentality in the jewelry I create, an automatic nostalgia in every piece. I like everything that leaves my hands to do so ready to tell a story.

Almost everything I make is hand-fabricated; very rarely do I cast pieces. I love the hands-on, bit-by-bit coming-together process of fabricating a piece. Metalwise, I work in silver, but the materials I bring to the metal can range anywhere from precious and semiprecious stones, to antique watch parts, to animal bones, to tiny toys, to beautiful bits of hardware, to typewriter keys, to acrylic-set organic materials, such as seashells or butterfly wings. Basically, there are so many beautiful and unusual materials and shapes in the world that inspire me, that I just feel lucky to have stumbled into a medium that allows me to use these sources to create wearable pieces. Do you remember, as a child, finding a particularly perfect seashell or a nicely textured piece of metal, and loving it so much you carried it every day in your pocket? Imagine being able to wear it every day, instead, in pendant or ring form--that's like disguising all of the most fun, secret parts about being a kid in something that can almost pass for grown-up!