Leaning In.

I’m home from my first show of the year, my annual trek to the Palm Beach Fine Craft Show. I’ve been doing this show for over twenty years. It’s usually one of my strongest of the year, and over time I’ve built relationships with collectors who return year after year. There’s a rhythm to it. A familiarity. I spend the winter creating new ideas in the hope of surprising and delighting long-time collectors while welcoming new ones into the fold.

This year was the usual whirlwind, with the added layer that my husband also exhibits in the downstairs art section. The weeks leading up to the show become a complicated dance of logistics, packing, problem solving, and caffeine. If I’m honest, I went into this one carrying a fair amount of anxiety.

I came home exhausted and with a head cold just in time for a once-in-a-decade blizzard. I took a few days to rest and recoup and began the familiar post-show rehash: what sold, what sparked conversation, what lingered in people’s hands, and where to go from here. Feedback at shows is crucial. If a body of work receives no interest — not even someone asking to see it out of the case, trying it on, or asking questions — that tells me something. It may be time to pivot toward what resonated more strongly. If you’ve been following my work, you may know that I work in a lot of directions, so while it’s a bummer when a series I like doesn’t get the attention I hoped, working in the vacuum of my studio, I never really know what will resonate. Sometimes it’s just not the right time for a series, and it needs to be shelved for now and possibly revisited later.

Overlaying all of this is the reality that material costs have shifted dramatically this year. The silver in one of my wider cuff bracelets now costs $150 to $200 more than it did for the exact same amount of metal. A 16-inch omega cable that once felt like a supporting element is now $80 to $100 more. These aren’t incremental changes. They are significant jumps in raw materials before I even begin working. In some cases, the increase alone approaches what I originally charged for the entire piece.

For years I followed a traditional pricing formula: calculate labor, add materials, multiply appropriately for wholesale and retail. It’s logical. It works — until the material portion balloons to the point where multiplying it through produces numbers that feel disconnected from reality. So I chose not to compound the increases. Instead, I kept my structure largely intact and adjusted directly for the raw hikes. I absorbed what I could. I adjusted what I couldn’t. I can’t stress enough how much I agonized over those decisions, more than anyone walking through my booth could possibly know.

During the show, a past customer stopped by and told me she had come specifically to replace a ring of mine that had been stolen while she was traveling abroad. She described the trip in detail; it sounded extraordinary. The ring, she said, was the piece she missed most. Hearing that meant more to me than she probably realized. When she looked at my current prices, I could see her recalibrating, and she left without replacing the ring.

Now, if this were a movie, this is the moment when the action would pause and I’d look straight into the camera, caught somewhere between embarrassment and disappointment. I hesitated to even share this story because I honestly worried it might sound too negative, but it felt important to leave it intact so you could follow the full arc of my thinking. In that moment, I did feel defensive — not toward her exactly, but toward the tension of it all: the math, the timing, the vulnerability of standing behind new numbers in an increasingly expensive world. The ring had been purchased many years ago. In that time, materials have changed. My experience has deepened. The work itself has evolved.

Once those feelings settled, the larger question remained: what determines value? Not just cost. Value.

I sometimes wonder if there is an unspoken ceiling for functional objects. Jewelry is worn. It’s intimate. It lives on the body. Sculpture, especially large-scale three-dimensional work, occupies space without serving a function and often commands monumental pricing without the same hesitation. Jewelry has historically lived in the category of “craft.” It has also historically been associated with adornment and with women. Those categories carry weight, whether we acknowledge them or not.

At this point, I’m going to pause the action again, look directly into the camera, and say clearly that the show was not a failure. It was extremely successful, and I’m deeply grateful for that. I’m also aware that not everyone is my collector. Palm Beach is its own ecosystem, and one show will not define the year ahead. Still, no matter how much success one experiences, it is often the smallest critiques or moments of perceived failure that linger longest. It is entirely possible she was simply working within a budget. That explanation is rational and likely. But that did not stop my mind from circling back and trying to make meaning of it. I swear, us artists can get one hundred positive comments, and one slightly negative one, and that is what our thoughts will harp on-…orrrrrr, it could just be me, lol.

As a result, I came home briefly obsessed with creating pieces at lower price points — smaller, simpler, with less expensive materials. I even made a few prototypes with rubber cords and colorful nylon neck wires. I dove head-on into that rabbit hole, but I wasn’t thrilled with what emerged. The ideas were fine, but they nudged the work in a direction I don’t really want to go.

The ideas pulling at me right now are more sculptural. More labor-intensive. More fully realized. The new series I’ve been immersed in is technically and logistically more difficult, and even more one-of-a-kind. I’ve been creating increasingly intricate chains, working with higher-quality and rarer stones, in addition to creating and carving more complex glass. I’m simply not happy stripping away the elements that feel essential. I keep an imaginary fairy-God-father Tim Gunn on my shoulder, nudging me to stay true to my vision (if you’ve ever watched Project Runway, you know exactly what I mean).

So instead of joining the world of shrink-flation, I’m leaning in, full throttle, at least for now.

Maybe this moment is not about compressing the work to fit perceived ceilings and price points. Maybe it is about allowing the work to grow — and allowing the value to rise accordingly. I don’t have all the answers, and I still second-guess myself more often than I would like. What I do know is that cost and value are not the same thing. I’m still sorting out where the line between them belongs, but I’m doing it on my own terms.