Fine Silver w/ Sterling Silver Large Eye Earrings by Reba Engel
2 3/4" x 1/2"
 
True West, Santa Fe Presents:  Reba Engel​
 
Follow your instincts!
 
My first childhood jewelry creations, assembled pieces of my mother’s broken costume jewelry from a shoebox, ultimately inspired a career. A high school class taught me the fundamentals of fabricating jewelry and I was hooked.This lifelong passion led me to launch my jewelry collection in 1999 — drawing from two decades in the fashion industry, a bachelor’s degree in Applied Arts and a brief career in interior design. Sewing lessons from my mother spurred a career selling apparel and eventually to producing a hand-painted accessory line — all influencing my love for art and fashion. While I studied metalsmithing with Arline Fisch at SDSU, her enthusiastic guidance ignited my desire to create more jewelry. A job designing TV news sets taught me how form, line, texture, space and color achieve visual depth. Once I grasped these elements, I began building my jewelry collection for the modern market.​Each experience provides a dynamic combination as I develop my work with the fundamentals of three-dimensional construction. First, I design for the body’s contours, then I engineer overlapping components and apply finishes and gemstones to express “functional sculpture.” Blending and pushing the boundaries between fashion, art, architecture and traditional fine jewelry techniques, my pieces emphasize modern, minimalist shapes with intricate structures and colors.​My devotion is to design innovative jewelry that feels innately familiar yet artistically progressive.”