Margaret Paul has been an artist with Edgewater Gallery for seven years excelling at her unique style of making silver jewelry from antique sterling flatware. She takes trips regularly to Europe to seek out those special finds of ornate, intricate, well known old-world craftsman styles of sterling flatware which she then brings into her Ft Bragg studio where she creates her one-of-a-kind works of wearable art. In parallel to her jewelry for the September Featured Artist show, she will be bringing in some of her rarely viewed watercolor, ceramic mosaics and stained-glass works.
Margaret states “I really love working with porcelain because it is so dense, it can be indoor or outdoor. Incorporating unique crochet pieces into the porcelain pieces makes for extraordinary textures in the work. When the glaze is applied and fired, wonderful things then happen! It is so exciting to open the kiln and see a new texture, a new glaze.”
She makes everything from indoor water fountains, to sculpted wall hangings as well as working with sea glass inserted in a myriad of ways into her exciting sculptures.
A few years ago, a visitor came to Edgewater who had recently lost her husband. She bought several of Margaret’s nicest, oldest rings. She was so inspired by Margaret’s work that she soon came back and commissioned Zodiac rings for all her children. She took them to the beach, and they arrayed their hands in the sand displaying the beauty of the rings inside the hands interlocking symmetry. It was a sweet bonding moment for the family after the death of a loved one.
In 2002, Margaret activated the Young Artists Program at the Mendocino Art Center, providing a wide variety of art experiences for the children here on the coast. In addition, she taught workshops in ceramic mosaics at MAC, culminating in a community public works project in Fort Bragg at the Veterans’ Memorial Hall in 2010.
