STAFF

Elesa Phares Elesa has been painting and drawing ever since she can remember. Horses have been her primary subject and passion since childhood. She has been free-lancing in advertising and artistic services since graduating from MTSU in 1996 with a major in digital animation and a minor in commercial art. After her father began making jewelry, she became interested in learning to make wire-wrapped jewelry. Elesa expanded her skills to include soldering, fabrication and more recently, creating Fine Silver jewelry using Precious Metal Clay. Her real joy is designing and creating a unique piece of jewelry that is functional as well as beautiful. "My jewelry is a reflection of my desire to create. Drawing was easy for me and I found working with acrylics allowed me to express myself in new ways. Working with color palettes, and brushes to paint on paper or canvas led me to explore the realm of computer graphics and 3-D digital animation. Using the computer to layout and design drawings or illustrations was a natural extension of my creative interests. A move to North Carolina and being the mother of three small energetic boys, ended my part-time work as a graphics designer restoring old photographs, designing magazine, billboard and print ads. To my surprise, wire-wrapping became a creative outlet and allowed me to explore a new art form in jewelry. I quickly mastered wire-wrapping and wanted to design jewelry. After returning to Murfreesboro in 2003, my father taught me silversmithing and other jewelry making skills. We began working with Precious Metal Clay. PMC is a wonderful new media as it allows me total freedom to mold, sand, smooth and polish the clay. When fired in a kiln the clay becomes fine silver, and can be finished into a piece of wearable art. I am using Keum-boo, an ancient asian technique to add 24KT gold accents to my fine silver jewelry. This gives my designs a uniqueness and elegance, much like icing on the cake! Memberships: Tennessee Association of Craft Artists Stones River Craft Artists Association Cumberland Valley Bead Society The Arts Center of Cannon County