Meet your jeweler
Jaquelyn Lambert graduated in 2014 from Northern Michigan University’s Metal Craft BFA program. Born and raised in Marquette, Michigan on the shores of Lake Superior, Jaki finds inspiration while hiking trails to the beach and collecting rock specimens from the shore. Her jewelry designs reflect influences from science fiction, using geometric repeating patterns and colors seen often in futurism and art deco to explore the properties of light and space through use of negative space.
Little Presque Isle, Marquette, Michigan, 2015. Photo by Jaquelyn Lambert
I decided after high school that college was the best choice; I had no idea what I wanted to be but I knew even then that I needed discipline. I moved from California back to my home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 2008 and in the winter of 2010 (I took a gap year..and a half…to work in food service) started at Northern Michigan University’s business department with a declared major in accounting. One semester in and I knew this wasn’t the right path for me. It was painfully clear that my short-lived dream of being a successful CPA was not going to pan out, so I defeatedly browsed the university website list of majors in hopes of finding a new path. It was then that I saw the words “art and design”. Art school?! I had always found comfort in craft but never had a specific medium or recognizable style, especially one that could yield a career path. I browsed the alphabetical list of art majors and came across a gallery of photos from the sculpture and metalsmithing department. The blacksmiths forging at their anvils, sparks flying, abstract sculptures proudly displayed with a smile by hard working artists with dirt on their faces. THIS is where I wanted to be! To create in an environment where my peers could give honest critique and I could learn from local artists who have spent decades honing their craft. Without a second thought I switched my major to Metalsmithing.
I learned how to forge iron, how to carve wax and cast it in bronze, how to braze and solder and how to weld. In 2012 I decided to call myself City By The Lake and began incorporating my own personal style into my work. Drawing from aspects of sci-fi and futurism I created my junior thesis project, using silversmithing processes to create a line of jewelry that explored the ideas of light and space. Semi-translucent stones were set in sterling silver with a cut-out that allowed light to shine through the back of the jewelry. I built a color-changing light box that sent a shifting spectrum of light shining through the backs of the pieces, exploring the changing nature of the terrestrial stones with different colored lights. I found humor in the dichotomy of the very human, very earthly aspect of jewelry adornment and creating jewelry that looked like it came from a different planet altogether. My jewelry style was beginning to take shape and my ideas and inspiration were well-received by the panel I was defending my thesis to.
My senior thesis was quite different. I cast a large-scale display of aluminum body parts belonging to imagined beasts: alien heads and hoofed feet, adorned with rubber and plastic jewelry. I can’t say this project was as well-received; a few people understood the work, but most were left confused. This is jewelry? For…aliens? The biggest piece of advice I was given from my advisor before I started this was to not explore a new medium for one’s senior project, to stick with what you know and show people the cumulative skills you’ve acquired in your college career. Of course, I did not listen. I spent hours learning about liquid rubber and experimenting with texture and cutting shapes from cured sheets of the material. I find it hard to do what people say, especially if it seems like my ideas are being stifled. And though I still proudly display the aluminum creatures in my workshop, I wish I would have explored my talents in silversmithing jewelry and continued with the idea of light, space and adornment in human jewelry. I look back and laugh at my bullheadedness now, but that project taught me much about the way people react to an artist’s vision.
To this day I find inspiration on the covers of sci-fi novels and in terrestrial rock and mineral, but I stick to creating jewelry for human beings. I find ways to include nature in my jewelry without being literal; you won’t find flowers and animals or much representational imagery in my jewelry; rather, I find ways to include nature itself into the designs. Setting stones like jasper and agate, texturing metal to look like earth and sand, keeping a telluric, rough texture and evidence of hand-built connections are ways that I keep the Earth in my jewelry.
Follow my timeline of style by browsing my gallery of previous work!
Love and light,
Jaquelyn Lambert
City By The Lake Jewelry
city by the lake jewelry
Marquette, Michigan, USA