Some of the ‘get creative’ team had the pleasure of studying under the USA’s Nina Bagley when she came to Australia for Art Journey Retreat. Inspired by her spirit and ideas we’ve tackled a project based on her approach and pinned the busy artist down to answer a few questions.
Nina came to Australia twice this year. “I fell in love with your country, with your people, with your fierce pride and love of your traditions, and the students were some of the most enthusiastic and laid back that I’ve ever taught,” she says. “When can I come back?”
For close to 20 years she has been a jewellery designer although her early training was in a university journalism. In the early 1980s, when her two sons were very young, Nina was working as a secretary in the journalism department while her then husband pursued his Masters Degree in Business.
“I deplored that job,” she says now, “having to sit in an office all day and answer the phone, type someone else’s words... awful for me. At lunchtime I would walk down the main street to clear my head and often passed a lovely little antique shop with a street window chock full of antique linens and jewellery. Somehow I decided to hand stitch some small heart-shaped lace sachets, took them to show the owner (I can’t believe my stamina there) and he ordered four on the spot."
Soon Nina was freelancing for the store, designing and stitching pillows from vintage linens and lace. This progressed to jumpers with collaged lace and then belts. The fronts of the belts became more and more dimensional as she incorporated antique beads and trimmings. “One day I looked at the piece I was sewing onto the belt and thought to myself that I should begin making jewellery as well... Finally, in 1991, I decided to attend Penland School for Crafts (see www.penland.org), in the mountains of north Carolina and sent a letter to customers stating that if they were willing to send a small donation towards my school costs, I would make them a piece of metal jewellery upon my return. The response was remarkable and I’ve been working in metal ever since,” she says.
As most of us know, it’s one thing to be a talented artist but another to pass those skills on to students. Nina says the preparation and hard work that must be done before the doors of a class open - designing and fine tuning the workshops and projects involved, assembling the kits and tools, packing, the cost of travel and the time away from home and the studio - is significant but the rewards are many.
“There is the joy that springs forth from students when they have that ‘I get it’ moment, the tears that sometimes come to their eyes from excitement and pride, the friendships I’ve made along the way with fellow teachers and with students, and with orchestrators of art retreats,” she says.
When at home in the USA, Nina has a wonderful rhythm to her working days, saying she generally “ambles” into her studio late in the morning, “after I’ve spent a couple of hours on line answering email, blogging and updating my files”, then she stops for a late lunch and resumes working from 2pm to around 7pm. “... If I am pressed for time, with a workshop and jewellery sales coming up, I’ll carry a tray with me to the living room in the evening and wire pre-completed components together. And then I might work until 1am, but never in the studio late at night.”
Her work features in a seminal publication called ‘True Colors: A Palette of Collaborative Art Journals’ which was published in 2003 and remains an important milestone in Nina’s career.
“Ah, what a lovely book and what a fine group of artists; we still stay in touch as a group today, writing emails back and forth, sending flowers when someone loses a loved one, sending encouragement about an exciting project or new work,” she says.
“My friend and fellow teacher/artist, Lynne Perrella, gathered together fifteen of us for the collaboration,
something that took just over a year. After all was said and done, it became a book. What a grand response it has had! Many people were inspired to do colour collaborations after that, and the words ‘true colours’ instantly bring the book to many people’s minds... I suppose that it gave me further publicity and cemented quite a few friendships in the process.”
Our creative teacher
Nina Bagley
Her specialty
Jewellery designer/multi-media artist
Where she teaches
USA and globally
Find her at
www.ornamental.typepad.com (blog)
Nina’s Etsy.com shop (Narrative Jewelry by Nina Bagley): www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=29835
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