Art World Puts Jeweler on Her Mettle : Local Crafter Uses Silver and Stone to Express ‘Personal Views’ in Showcase at Fullerton

Returning to college after raising two children, Erika Wolfe planned to get a degree in sculpture. The experimental ‘70s made her switch gears.

She vividly remembers encountering art fashioned from pubic hair, multicolored tampons and coat hangers and one exhibit’s entryway that forced viewers to walk between the legs of a female statue.

“It all made me realize that while I wanted to do original work, I didn’t want to do it in the fine-art world that had boundaries beyond my imagination,” Wolfe, 56, said recently. “I decided that, as a sensible housewife, I was never going to cut it.”

Changing her major to craft, Wolfe graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 1975 with a specialty in metal and has made jewelry ever since. She’s one of 18 artists from across the country showcased in “Personal Views in Jewelry and Metalsmithing” at Muckenthaler Cultural Center.

Don’t expect to find the mass-produced stuff you’d find at a chain jewelry store, however.

Indicative of much contemporary metalwork, the show’s 120 pieces are made from such unorthodox materials as blinking computer parts, speed-limit signs and sawdust. Others are fashioned from more conventional copper, aluminum, forged silver and semiprecious stones.

They range from large, aggressive wall hangings and whimsical, animalistic salt and pepper shakers to lamps that look like tiny, atavistic treehouses and exquisitely crafted pendants.

“Viewers who may be new to this world of jewelry, metal smithing or object-as-art may be amused, confused, frustrated and enlightened by the vast array of ‘creative children’ that each artist has allowed to leave ‘home,’ ” writes guest curator David LaPlantz, a veteran jeweler and professor at Humboldt State University, in the show’s catalogue.

Wolfe acknowledges unapologetically that her elegant, sharp-edged, sterling-silver brooches and necklaces are among the exhibit’s most conventional works.

“Experimentation for me is very difficult,” she said during an interview at Muckenthaler. “I always draw the piece first, and when it’s done and looks like the drawing and comes to life, I get a really wonderful feeling. It’s an incredible natural high.”

All her works are one-of-a-kind pieces that Wolfe considers “small sculpture.” They feature rectangular designs highlighted with opal, onyx, quartz, lapis lazuli and other dazzling semiprecious stones.

She said she suspects that her heritage--she was born in East Germany--somehow influenced her geometric style, which is rooted in Russian Constructivism and the Bauhaus School. (One necklace is titled “Kandinsky Blue Lights.”)

“I like geometric shapes,” said Wolfe, wearing an outfit--a skirt and top with an angular crosshatch pattern--that illustrated her point. “I feel they are kind of a mathematical order that everyone can understand.”

A resident of Orange, Wolfe received her graduate art degree from Cal State Fullerton in 1989 and has taught jewelry, art and journalism for 17 years at Canyon High School in Anaheim Hills.

She said craftsmanship is critical. “Pieces need to fit together really well, so I make all of my own findings--catches and latches and things.”

She is also engaged in a “love affair with silver” and uses several techniques to create contrasting surface tones and textures.

“If you respect (silver) and work it to its utmost, it can be every bit as noble as gold or platinum,” Wolfe said. “If you don’t, it’ll just hide itself and be like nickel or tin.”

Wolfe sells her work at a gallery in Yorba Linda and one in San Francisco and has taken part in gallery and college exhibits. Being chosen for LaPlantz’s show brought newfound self-confidence.

Both her parents and ex-husband greeted any expression of artistic aspiration with such statements as “ ‘That’s nice, but did you do the weeding in the garden? or did you do this and do that?’ ” she said.

“This is the first show that’s made me feel I was a legitimate metal artist,” she said.

From here, she wants to maintain momentum and explore new ideas.

“It’s important to me that I don’t drop the ball at my age,” she said. “I want to keep showing my work.”

It’s a good time to be doing that, she added, because women are bolder than ever about the jewelry they wear.

“We’re not so afraid of hiding behind pretty,” she said. “We can make a strong statement about ourselves that’s as individual as the woman herself. I think it’s great.”

* “Personal Views in Jewelry and Metalsmithing” runs through Feb. 28 at Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 1201 W. Malvern Ave., Fullerton. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Free. (714) 738-6595.