About Us
We firmly believe that learning is a lifelong pursuit.
Jennifer Stenhouse
EDUCATOR / ARTIST / JEWELER / RESEARCHER / AUTHOR
Jennifer’s interest in art began at an early age when her grandfather introduced her black and white photography at the age of 12. That sparked a flame for creating that has since grown into a life long passion for art and teaching. She continued studying photography and printmaking while attending the University of New Mexico. During her graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison, Jennifer studied with professors that encouraged her to continue mixed media and jewelry skills. They gave Jennifer the opportunity to develop a strong base in metals techniques and design, and a better understanding of integrity to one’s craft. She began her teaching career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After graduate school, she began teaching at Savannah College of Art and Design. Due to the strong interest of students wanting to major in Metals and Jewelry, Jennifer proposed and developed The Metals and Jewelry Department. While in Savannah she also maintained a small studio in the historic City Market.
After departing Savannah Jennifer began teaching at the Vermont Art Exchange in North Bennington, Vermont. At VAE she taught several classes and workshops in jewelry, printmaking, and drawing.
Jennifer moved to Seattle in 2000 and has a studio in the Ballard neighborhood. Currently, she creates jewelry, sculpture, teaches classes and workshops in the western Washington area, including North Seattle College. She has been teaching art and jewelry classes, workshops, lectured, and exhibited throughout the U.S. and Mexico.
Education:
University of Wisconsin – Madison, Masters of Fine Arts
University of New Mexico, Bachelors of Fine Arts
Tamarind Institute / UNM, Graduate Printmaking Internship
Go to Stenhouse Studio to see more of Jennifer's work.
Julia Lowther
JEWELER / EDUCATOR / AUTHOR
I was born in rural Virginia. At 8, I moved with my family to the remote Quaker community of Monteverde in the tropical mountains of Costa Rica. There we walked barefoot to school, hauled goods and people on horseback, and thought nothing of cooking dinner on a wood stove when the erratic electric power was out. Life included pie socials, building bees, few cars, no TV, and Christmas gifts made by hand. If things broke, you fixed them, if you needed something you didn’t have, you created it out of what you did have or did without it. From this upbringing, I inherited a delight in the engineering puzzles of inventing and building and easy patience with the general processes of making things.
Growing up, my hands were always busy with embroidery, crocheting, weaving, and other fiber arts. I received professional instruction in painting and drawing as well, but only discovered metalwork and jewelry when I moved to Seattle, Washington in 1996. Early in my experiments with metal, I gravitated to chains. I find chains appealing as the unruly stiffness of wire is transformed into flexible, portable, and comfortable structures of satisfying weight. The manual dexterity gained from decades of handwork and needlework served me well and translated nicely to linking and knitting with wire.
Today I still live in Seattle, now writing articles and teaching classes on chain making, with work showcased in numerous books & magazines.
Helen Cowart
JEWELER / GLASS ARTIST
Helen Cowart is a traditionally trained artist who fell in love with kiln-formed glass. She creates art for viewing and wearing; pieces that are connected and speak with the same voice.
Helen’s work is informed by her environment, both internal and external. Much of it is meditative, creating a place for the viewer that is quiet and thoughtful. She also creates to express her delight in color, line, shape, and texture.
Helen attended Parson’s School of Design for her freshman year and graduated from Florida State University with a BA in Studio Art. At FSU, she took her first jewelry class in her senior year.
After graduating, she worked as a graphic designer for over 20 years. Feeling the need for change in her life, she returned to jewelry briefly in 2009, and in the process of using precious metal clay was introduced to kiln-formed glass. Falling in love with the glass, Helen spent the next 7 years learning and creating with the medium.
She moved to Seattle in 2015. At the beginning of 2016, she took the beginning jewelry class at Pratt Fine Arts as a refresher and it reignited her interest in working precious metals. Since then her focus has been to combine her glass and metal art.
Our Instructors
-
Jeff de Boer
ARTIST / EDUCATOR
Jeff has established himself as a renowned sculptor and designer, made famous for his museum-quality suits of armour for cats and mice, now collected all over the world.
More of Jeff's work can be found on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. He also founded Armet Canada.
-
Milt Fischbein
ARTIST / EDUCATOR
Milt Fischbein is an independent metal artist and educator. He is a professional engineer who discovered his love of working with precious metals over 30 years ago, while taking an introduction to jewellery class at the Alberta College of Art and Design.
He is one of only a handful of metal artists in North America whose primary focus is the design and fabrication of filigree objects. Milt has been fine-tuning ancient filigree fabrication techniques in his Calgary, Alberta studio, creating a body of contemporary silver and gold filigree jewellery and other filigree objects. Milt has been passing on his knowledge of filigree techniques through in-person and online workshops, lectures, and instructional videos. He is a professional member of the Alberta Craft Council and a member of the Calgary Rock and Lapidary Club.
Milt has created a series of 8 instructional videos demonstrating basic filigree techniques for Ganoksin, the world’s largest online community of metalsmiths. His works have been published in Edmonton’s Where Magazine and Alberta Craft Magazine. A write-up on his studio was featured in the July 2017 issue of the MJSA Journal.
You can find Milt on these platforms: mfmetalarts.com, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube
-
Ting Lu
ARTIST / EDUCATOR
I joined the jewelry world as a maker late in life, having spent my entire professional career as a telecommunication engineer. Retired in 2023, I now work full time as a metal artist in my studio, in the suburb of Atlanta, Georgia.
I am a self-taught artist who has experimented with a variety of 2D/3D art and craft for my entire life. These include pencil/ink sketching, water color and acrylic painting, calligraphy, clay/pottery, fabric art, Batik/silk painting, glass work, wood carving, sculpture, and many others. It was not until 2014 when I took a silversmith class for the first time at a local art center, that I became fully focused in metal and jewelry making.
The creation of an art object with metal is complex. Metalworking, through the eyes of art, and involvement of math, physics, and chemistry brought the challenges that I was looking for. I consider myself a "jack of all trades" with a diverse set of jewelry making skills. To complement metal, I often experiment with unconventional materials. I love to engineer playful kinetic jewelry with movements, and multi-purpose jewelry pieces allowing more than one wearing option. You can see some samples of my work on the Jewelry Collections page.
I have participated in a number of competitions and exhibitions since I started metal work in 2014. You can see them at the Awards and Exhibitions page.
Besides jewelry making, I spent many months a year for post-retirement travels. I write Travel and Food blogs during these trips to share my experience in culture, arts, and foods in the world.
TingLuDesign.com
-
Leslie Perrino
ARTIST / EDUCATOR
Leslie Perrino began her artistic career studying theatre then detoured to receive an AD in nursing, detoured again after discovering metals and jewelry to to complete her BA She received her MA and in returned to Chicago in 1997 as a full time artist and teacher. She currently lives in Racine, Wisconsin, where she maintains a home studio. Leslie is an adjunct professor teaching jewelry and enameling at the College of Lake County, and is faculty /coordinator of the jewelry department at the Evanston Art Center, and jewelry instructor at the Racine Art Museum. In addition, she teaches workshops in Illinois and Wisconsin, sells her artwork informally online and in four Wisconsin galleries.
Leslie Perrino is an artist and "art evangelist" who loves to share the power of art and creativity with people, particularly in her beloved areas of metals and enameling. Her artwork is a quirky mix of traditional and found objects, most recently combining computer/electrical components with enamels. She is a charismatic and effective teacher who encourages skill building and exploration of the medium.
You can learn more about her process on Instagram @leslieperrino
-
Nisa Blackmon
ARTIST / EDUCATOR
Nisa Blackmon is a full-time studio artist with an MFA from the University of Illinois, a Masters of Science from Oklahoma State University and 30 years of metalsmithing, jewelry-making and teaching experience. Nisa’s current work is focused on combining traditional techniques, like silverwork and enamels, with found objects and unconventional materials in innovative ways (such as her signature technique of tab-construction). She has been making steel wire structures since 1994, using them as frameworks upon which to hang swatches of evocative found and created materials in her narrative jewelry and small sculptures. Nisa’s award-winning work can be found in numerous publications, including “500 Enameled Objects”, “500 Necklaces,” ”21st Century Jewelry: Best of the 500 Series” and “Narrative Jewelry: Tales from the Toolbox.” She teaches jewelry and enameling workshops at local, collegiate and national venues and runs her own business, Wishbone Studio, featuring contemporary narrative and production jewelry and other objects of joyful craft. Nisa hails from central Oklahoma and currently makes her home in Normal, Illinois, with her partner Will and far too many gardens to keep up with.
Nisa's work can be found on her website https://www.nisablackmon.com, Instagram at @nisablackmon, and Facebook.
-
Chris Anderson
CREATOR / EDUCATOR
Like many makers Chris is a self taught. However he will openly credit the many amazing mentors he has encountered during his journey. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, Chris has a deep connection with the outdoors and many of his creations are inspired by nature.
Chris started at an early age (10-12 years old) in woodworking, mostly carving Ozark style figurines and animals. Later, he ventured into more construction related projects like furniture and residential and shop construction.
In 2016 Chris started Lion Punch Forge as a hobby after he, his brother, and father bought a coal fired blacksmith shop. Eventually learning to weld, do basic fabrication and light machine work to make his own replacement parts. Eventually Chris wanted to make his knives more intricate and started teaching himself goldsmithing and metal forming.
Making jewelry allowed Chris to rediscover his love for geology. He quickly picked up lapidary arts such as faceting gemstones, slabbing and making cabochons. Most of the year Chris can be found treasure hunting for his own gemstone and lapidary rough.
Now retired from 20 years of public safety, Chris is self employed running Lion Punch Forge Full-time. Chris’s experience as an instructor in Public Safety has transcended into the world of making. Making Youtube videos, Instagram posts and hanging out in Facebook groups Chris openly shares information and provides assistance to anyone who asks. When asked what he thinks is the most important aspect of a business is he will quickly answer, “people.”
Chris is inspired by the metalsmith and maker communities and values he fundamental skills. Believing that it is through the mastery of basic skills that one achieves the level up. Chris take this into account when designing tools.
While designing the Lion Punch Forge line of tools it’s important to him to evaluate the fundamentals, simplistic design and creates them with a unique bespoke and heirloom quality.
His work can be seen on Instagram @lionpunchforge or on his website lionpunchforge.com/.
Our Support Staff
