Meet the Artist

Karen West

Jewelry

After 25 years as a wildlife biologist, Karen West closed that career and focused fulltime on the craft of jewelry. She attended jewelry classes at a local community college, a teaching studio in Berkeley, California; and finally, Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts in San Francisco. She’s been showing her work, mostly at art and craft fairs in the western United States, since 2008. 

Karen uses traditional metalsmith techniques (saw/pierce, solder, fuse, forge, stone set techniques) and the Korean technique of keum boo (“attached gold”) to transform sterling silver, argentium silver, high karat gold and natural river/beach stone into jewelry pieces that look earthy and organic, yet modern and refined.

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