Stephen Dalton Jewelry - "The Nature of Color: Animals to Abstraction"

Richmond jewelry designer Stephen Dalton, the creator of Half-Baked Ideas, will be C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery’s featured artist during the month of July. The artist will be at the gallery on July 2 from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. during the Historic Downtown Mall’s First Friday event.
 

 
Dalton began making jewelry about 25 years ago, after surviving a diving accident that left him seeking a new direction in his life. He soon began to make his living creating watercolor paper and epoxy jewelry. All of Dalton’s pins, pendants, and earrings begin as paper. Paints, batiks, fabric, wire, and beads are incorporated to achieve a whimsical or sculptural effect, and each piece goes through a three-day epoxy process, which creates a hard, deep, glossy finish. The result is a durable, unique piece of wearable art.



The threads that connect Dalton’s work are his passion for color and nature, and the mixing of the two things in ways that are both whimsical and pleasing. In his world, a purple dog or cat seems very domesticated, if not commonplace. Colors lifted from nature are the genesis for his more abstract pieces.
 
“I feel most comfortable and free working back-and-forth in the wide spectrum between representational designs and abstract ones,” Dalton says.  “Color is usually my first consideration before starting a piece.  I see colors in my mind’s eye, or maybe colors pressed together in my garden—flora or fauna—and I take notes to access them later.”
 
“People are attracted to the bright colors in Stephen’s work,” said Amy Melville, administrator of C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery. “His whimsical designs featuring animals, flowers, or holiday themes like Christmas trees, are quite popular.”