About the Artist

Alison has been an artist since childhood, drawing, sketching or creating mixed media projects into her adulthood. Her love of art and the outdoors have always been priorities in her life. As an aspiring artist with a curiosity for environmental studies, Alison found College of the Atlantic, a small ecologically based school in Maine. After Graduating from COA with a degree in human ecology, she realized her true love was in the arts. In 1996 she took her first jewelry class and fell in love. It was discovering metal that gave here new direction as an artist. The possibilities metal offered, opened the door to a new chapter in Alison's life.

The following year Alison began working for an established artist on an island off the coast of Maine. It was there that her voice in metal started to emerge. Working alongside someone as creative and inspiring as Sam Shaw, pushed her boundaries and opened doors to endless possibilities. She began to take chances and explore bold new ideas. Alison, inspired by Sam's use of beach stones, wanted to incorporate nature's colors into her work, She began photographing the colors she saw. By using a telephoto lens, she could capture colorful textures and abstract images within a photograph. These textures and images are what she began to incorporate into her work. Quickly her work evolved into something unique to the jewelry world. Her photographs transformed into gemstones.

Since 1998 Alison has been working with photographs and metal. She enjoys challenging people to see beyond the symbolism of what jewelry is in our society, to a place where the jewelry becomes art. The differences between a precious gemstone and photographs beneath resin are subtle. If she feels she has challenged people with something unexpected, and created a beautiful piece of jewelry at the same time, she has been successful as an artist.