Member of the Month: Rachel Morris

Website: https://eclecticnaturejewelry.com
Instagram:@eclecticnaturejewelry

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’ve followed a rather unconventional path, balancing dual careers that reflect both my analytical and creative sides. I often joke that I have “two three-quarter time jobs”—one as an artist/educator, and the other as a business consultant. I’ve rarely had fewer than two jobs at a time since I was 14, often in wildly unrelated fields, which has made for an unusual but richly textured professional life.

I hold a B.A. and M.A.T. in Theater Arts and began my career teaching public high school theater. In the early ’90s, I pivoted into business consulting, founding a firm that’s worked with clients like Pfizer, GTE, and Diageo on process improvement and technical project management. Alongside that, I’ve continued to pursue the arts—I owned one of the county’s biggest LARPs, I’m an Equity-produced playwright, and a past President of the Portland-area Creative Metal Arts Guild.

Art has been a constant since childhood; my family enrolled me in art classes starting at age five and always supported my creative pursuits. While I’ve explored many media, metalsmithing has always been my deepest passion – my “breathing.” I now live and have a studio in Portland, Oregon, after many years moving around (and enough New England winters to last a lifetime).

In my creative practice, I’m both a perpetual student and a dedicated teacher, offering in-person and virtual workshops in fabrication techniques and the business of art. I’ve been lucky to learn from generous mentors, and I strongly believe in “sharing the wealth” of knowledge—especially in a field that has historically leaned toward secrecy. That ethos probably comes naturally; I’m the child of two lifelong college professors, after all.

What is your favorite tool and why?

I’m not a big “favorites” gal – my favorite tool is always the one that gets the job done. That said, I have a few tools I’m particularly fond of: A Dumore drill press given to me by my mentor, John Cogswell as he was closing down his studio, which is unusual in that you bring the work up to the drill bit, rather than the more common downward press of bit to metal. 

Next is a simple masonry nail. One of my mid-career instructors finally got me past the fear of modding my own tools by handing me a box of them and teaching me to grind them down into setting tools. The hammer-textured bezel edge is a recurring theme in many of my settings as a result. 

Lastly, I found a stash of unopened boxes of files at a watchmakers’ estate sale – crossing, barrette, large, small, and watchmaker-tiny Grobets and Nicholsons– from the 1920s-1940s. I knew their age from the handwritten quality control tags inside them! I bought hundreds and wish to this day that I’d bought out the lot. They are so much higher quality steel than modern files that they spoil me for anything else!

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

While I don’t consider myself a photographer by any means, I love walking my neighborhood or pretty much any botanical garden I can find, especially during the off season as plants and flowers are desiccating and decaying. I shoot macro photos of the patterns and textures found in nature, especially as they intersect manmade ones (moss crawling a cement paver, vines draping a blasted rock wall alongside a road, the spiral of petals in a succulent). My favorite such photo series watches as an artichoke blooms and then dries out into a zombie-like form of its former thistle beauty. I’m still contemplating what work to make from those images!

What piece of advice would you give to someone just starting out in metals?

So many! Try ALL the things! You can’t learn, much less perfect, them all in a single lifetime, but you can dabble in enough to find some that resonate (which those are may change over time, and that’s not a bad thing). 

Study the same topic with as many instructors as possible – take the best of what you learn from each of them and make it your own.

Don’t be afraid to fail, to melt, to break stones – the failures teach you way more than successes ever do. It gets easier/faster/more satisfying as you go (then harder, then easier, then harder…as you hit more challenging designs). Keep a sketchbook and date your drawings: That dream piece you envision that you can’t do today, you’ll look back on in a few months and go “oh! I know how now!”

What has been the biggest challenge for you as a metal artist and have you overcome it, or how are you working to overcome it?

Finding my voice through intentional goal-setting. This meant evaluating my own work and thinking about how it differed from the artists I admired who were doing shows I wanted to be in. My target was a Boston-area show called “Paradise City Arts Festival”, which I grew up admiring. I realized early on that my work was flat and basic – cabochons on a single sheet of metal – maybe a little piercing or texturing. What I needed was dimension. I also accepted that I would never be a fine-finish jeweler – I don’t have the patience or attention to detail. 

Those two realizations led me to begin hollow form work – first spiculums and then large geometric hollows. Subsequent years’ goals included techniques geared towards a specific series (learning mokume billet making, studying chasing and repousse, etc.) or working on business-expanding tasks, such as improving my product photography or developing a better website. When COVID hit, it became expanding my teaching to live, online workshops and setting up a four-camera rig for my studio. As an introvert, this was terrifying to me. 

Every one of the goals furthered me understanding my voice as I refined the presentation of “me.” I embraced that my joy comes in the perpetual exploration of new designs and methods. While this may keep me out of certain shows for a perceived lack of continuity, I was able to say “to hell with it – I’m making what interests me!” Oh – and I finally got into the Paradise City show in 2024, after 12 years of trying. This year’s goal is apparently “write a book about clasp making!”

Favorite resource/vendor or website

For tools advice, especially on when to spend more or NOT spend more, I call Tevel at AllCraft in New York. He’s especially great for teachers wanting a student kit put together, and has some of the best keum boo gold I’ve ever worked with. (Call – the website’s not representative!)

For gemstones, since I like some unusual materials and cuts, I tend to shop with Joe Jelks of Horizon Mineral (who only comes as far west as Tucson, but I’m trying to convince him to do a west coast tour) or Curt at Rare Earth Mining.

For insanely high quality findings, I go to Myron Toback in NYC. The catalog has things not found on the website.

(more…)