Brittany Foster

"Making things more complicated, one broken saw blade at a time."

With innumerable influences, including cephalopods, industrial debris, and munitions, Brittany Foster makes things because she has always made things. As a youngster she was drawn to doing things with her hands. Jewelery seemed mysterious, which led her to wonder how people could possibly create such pieces with simple, manual tools. When she discovered there were also hammers and fire involved, it sealed the deal.

Having once been told that the human eye can detect a wave in a line to 0.03", Foster took it as a challenge. She uses a standard jeweler's saw to cut all of her squiggly lines by hand. Her work is not fueled by electricity, but, much like Popeye, by spinach and beer. She also deploys the classic "hit it with a hammer" technique on her wrought pieces, which balances well with the meticulous work of cutting intricate curlicues.

After taking community college courses in jewelry making, Foster went to the School for American Crafts at the Rochester Institute of Technology, graduating with honors in 2002. She then went on to set up an increasingly complicated shop, which now includes a small personal jungle. She has always worked as an independent jeweler with her own studio, developing her unique style through the time-honored method of trial and error.