Karen Luther’s Jewelry Lights Up the Valley
Karen Luther sat in her Pojoaque studio, long brown hair flowing over her shoulders, hoops ear-rings with little coral stones dangling from her ears, wearing a tie-dye blouse and peasant skirt, talking about her art, which covers a wide spectrum.
Not only is she a jeweler, she’s also tends goats, makes cheese, gardens and with the help of her partner, Robert Salazar, trains a horse named Beauty. First and foremost she’s the mother of two boys: Aodan and Cian.
An Archaeology major with a Bachelor of Arts from Buffalo State College in Buffalo, New York, her passion for the arts and crafts of antiquity are manifest in her jewelry.
With a special interest in Celtic symbols, because as she says, “this is my heritage, my ancestry,” the Irish-Welsh jeweler mines the symbols of the world’s cultures to craft necklaces, ear-rings, chains, bracelets and rings made of silver, copper, glass and gold.
“I’m always researching, reading books and drawing designs,” Luther said. “But in the end, it seems like I visualize images in my head and they are transferred to my jewelry.”
Cutting across cultural iconography, a plethora of symbols are manifest in her jewelry. There are necklaces with spirals, fish rings, various kinds of cross necklaces- including a silver ankh necklace that she had just finished- and the hands of Fatima, which she said shows up a lot in Moroccan jewelry, etched into a silver pendant.
One of her latest creations is a necklace called “the seven chakras.” Chakras are energy centers in Eastern mythology and Luther has created seven silver pieces with the symbol of each chakra on a blossoming flower.
Luther said she tries to spend two hours a day in her studio, but her other interests, such a cheese making, tend to draw her away from the jewelry studio into the kitchen.
About six years ago, she said, she and Robert started making goat cheese. They researched recipes on the internet, talk to other cheese makers and have evolved a product that is of gourmet quality.
“I like to use herbs we grow in our garden,” Luther said. “In the last batch of cheese, I used red chili and garlic. It was delicious.’
Luther said she also uses dill, sage, basil, chives and thyme, but this year, with the drought, the grasshoppers are devastating her crops.
A self-described “retro-hippy” she looks askance at the mass-produce culture of 21st century America.
She said her anthropological studies have made her aware that, in the past, all aspects of life had a spiritual aspect.
“Now days, everything is mass-produced,” she said. “I try to stay away from materials that are mass-produced. If I can make it by hand, from scratch, that’s what I try to do.”
As she described her aesthetics, a horse named Beauty could be heard in the corral, blowing dust out of its nostrils, in the corral next to her studio.
Beauty is a 2-year-old draft quarter horse from Alberta, Canada, Luther said.
“We bought Beauty from a laboratory in Alberta that used pregnant mare urine as part of an estrogen therapy research program,” Luther said. “The lab shipped her too us for free, and I think we paid $500 for her.”
For the past year-and-a-half, Luther and Salazar have been training Beauty to be a riding horse.
“I took English riding courses when I was a little girl,” Luther said. “Just a few days ago, I got on Beauty bareback. I can’t wait until we have her trained, so I can ride through the fields and hills.”
Whatever she’s doing, jewelry, gardening, cheese making, raising two boys or training a horse it’s the “challenge of doing something new” that drives the 34-year-old renaissance women.
“If I’m not doing something new, I feel like I’m stagnating,” she said. “Recently, I’ve started to paint again. I don’t try to sell my paintings; it’s just something I love to do.”
However, she does market her jewelry: two or three times a year, she and her family travel to arts and crafts fairs. Most recently, she showed at the juried People’s Fair in Denver.
Her jewelry is currently being shown at the Barbara Bowles Fine Art Gallery in Santa Fe, the Fuller Arts Center in Los Alamos, the Mountain Living Studio in Manitou Springs, Colorado, Tierra Montana in Las Cruces and the Northern New Mexcio Arts Catalog Gallery in Santa Fe. Her web-site, sacredsymbolsspeak.com offers wonderful examples of her work.
“I guess I think of myself as a person trying to do things I like that benefit other people,” she said. “As a society, we need to think about becoming more self-sufficient. At least that’s my dream.”
