State Route 511 runs through long stretches of rural Ashland, Ohio past sagging Victorian houses and isolated fields of milkweed and train tracks. Even as a toddler, vistas along this mostly uninhabited road filled me a clashing sense of wonder and unease. I tried to capture this sense in my necklace, On 511.
On the back of the piece, I etched a portion of a 1949 health insurance ID card which I found among family ephemera. I filled the piece with bronze to add gravitas and a physical feeling of statis. I etched the bezel of this piece with an original micro poem that I wrote during a recent visit to Ashland:
"My white breath climbed a tree
and a bird called a song I did not know."
On 511, necklace, 2017.
Sterling silver, vitreous enamel; etched, hand painted, torch fired, hand fabricated.
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