M E N D O C I N O C O A S T P R O P E R T Y

RealEventsPage 15

Volume 24 • Number 6 • Issue 604 • Mendocino Coast’s Own Real Estate Publication • September 17, 2010 to September 30, 2010

the unique jewelry of Chris and Shani Christenson

Profi le of a Small Business

in Mendocino County

Page 2 Real Estate Magazine September 17, 2010 to September 30, 2010

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On Our cOver: Chris and Shani took Metal Body Art to the runway on September First Fri-day in Fort Bragg. Jessica Vanbuskirk models the Amaterasu design. Daniel MacDonald photo.

Publisher Studio Z Mendocino Managing Editor Lisa Norman rem@mcn.org Ad Layout Joe jnneves@sbcglobal.net Graphic Production Zida zida1@sbcglobal.net Advertising Lisa Norman

Distribution

Mendocino Chuck Hathaway Cloverdale, Anderson Valley Chuck Hathaway Willits, Ukiah Patti Fereira Westport to Fort Bragg Chuck Hathaway Little River to Gualala Chuck Hathaway

It’s about having a dream. And it’s about having the pas-sion to follow that dream into reality.

Chris and Shani Christenson’s world is a parallel universe, steeped in myth and tradition. The Mendocino couple has been working in silver, gold, and gemstones, creating work that reflects their longtime fascination with ancient symbolism.

Both Chris and Shani can trace their fascination with jew-elry back to childhood, when each used a kind of creative deconstruction to experiment with metals and jewels. As a young child, Shani used to take apart jewelry that her grandfather bought at junk stores and garage sales. “I used to pry out the gems and beads, organize them into little boxes, restring necklaces, and just generally hoard the pretty sparklies.” As a child, Chris was fascinated with fire, and he spent a great deal of time melting lead pipes that had been put out for collection on the streets of his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. He would then pour the molten metal into horsetails and other natural objects to form casts.”

The couple first met as schoolmates in local Mendocino schools. The two were high school sweethearts and have been in love ever since. They started their jewelry careers at that point with Shani getting involved in beading and Chris apprenticing with master goldsmith Wolfgang Hasselkas, who was based in Mendocino. They soon began selling earrings and other pieces at various Mendocino shops, and participating in local craft fairs until their two children, Connor, now age ten, and Caiden, age four, came along. ”At one point we attended fifteen fairs per year,” Shani remembers “We had to slow way down, especially when Connor started school.”

In 1996, the couple joined the artists’ cooperative, Northcoast Artists Gallery, in Fort Bragg. Shani says that being a part of that community organization has made a huge impact on their business and their work.

“The community support and encouragement, the addi-tional resources available to us through the co-op, and the consistency of sales through Northcoast all gave us a big boost.”

In 2003, Chris and Shani took another big step and opened their Mendocino shop, Celtic Creations, overlooking Big River Bay from above the Gallery Bookshop on Main Street. “We wanted a place where people could watch us work, where someone could come and even participate in the creation process,” Chris enthuses. “The beauty of our coast is a constant inspiration and we hope to capture some of that energy and magic in our art.”

The Christensons have studied jewelry construction with a number of teachers, most influential of whom was Heyoka Merrifield. Merrifield, a Native American who taught jewelry through the Lady of the Lake foundation in Washington State, was also central to their quest to

Metal Body Art Passion and Dreams

Right: Chris and Shani Christenson in their studio, Celtic Creations

Margi Gomez photo.

Below: Front and back of their reversible necklace, Lady of the Lake. Shani Christenson photo.

The Jewelry Art of Chris and Shani Christenson story By Margi Gomez

see their work in jewelry as a personal spiritual journey, using symbolism and ceremony. Chris and Shani do not consider their creations to be truly finished until they have an “awakening ceremony,” something they feel brings energy to the jewelry, and a connection to the earth for its next owners. “Every piece of our jewelry touches one special feather”, Chris says. “This also allows us to let go, to say goodbye to our creation.”

Chris and Shani create rings, bracelets, necklaces, ear-rings, and now jeweled armor in their Mendocino studio, often basing their work on ancient symbols such as Celtic knots. Although they draw from a number of cultures, including Native American, Egyptian, and Asian tradi-tions, Celtic symbolism is still their main focus. “We have always been intrigued with Celtic art,” Chris explains.

“The Celtic knot, for example, is a single interwoven

line with no beginning and no end, which symbolizes eternity and the interweaving of all life. This early decorative and religious art was born of the traditions of the Celtic people who inhabited Britain and Ireland for many centuries.”

The couple use a number of classical jewelry techniques, including a glass enamel technique called champlevé, using a rubber mold, lost wax casting, and packing ground glass into recessed areas of the metal, usually silver, torch firing the piece at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, then grinding and polishing. Another common design used frequently in Chris and Shani’s artwork is the cameo. They specialize in a specific type of cameo known as the commesso, which originated in the fifteenth century French court.

“Only the face of the cameo is sculpted from shell, stone, or piano key ivory, and the design is completed in metals,” Shani says. “A unique feature of the Christensons’ commessos is that they are finished with a design on the back, creating a reversible piece of jewelry.”

Chris and Shani have also been teaching others, participating in the Mendocino Art Center’s Open Studio program as well as offering a number of jewelry fabrication classes through the Art Center. They offer instruction in several techniques, including the double-sided technique for which they have become known, layering metal using a unique cut away soldering method, and “sandwiching” large stones between silver overlays. Shani has taught jewelry to high school students during Alternative Education week, an enrichment program offered in April in Mendocino high schools, for several years. “We’ve had a number of apprentices over the years, and we love to share what we have learned,” says Chris. “I would say that teaching has been one of the most rewarding things we’ve done and gives us a chance to give back to the world that has given us so much.”

The Christensons’ path has not been without some major challenges. In January of 2008, the couple was shocked to receive a phone call inform-ing them that the historic Jarvis-Nichols building where their Mendocino shop is located, at the corner of Main and Kasten streets, was on fire. Chris rushed to the scene, crossed Big River bridge to see flames and black smoke billowing from the building.

Although the devastated couple was able to clean and save much of their jewelry and some crucial customer information, Shani describes the scene that she saw the following day as “total devastation.” She continues, “The fire started in a bathroom, and everything was covered with thick, plastic smelling soot. There was water and retardant foam everywhere. All of the woodwork, benches, shelving, and display cases were ruined.”

Chris says that the most important thing he was able to take from the fire was the gratitude that came from the realization of how much worse it could have been. “Despite the amazing work the Mendocino Volunteer Fire Department did, we literally almost lost everything. My mom had passed away a few years earlier, and I kept feeling that her spirit was there protect-ing us.” Thankfully, with help from the community at large as well as fellow jewelers, Chris and Shani were able to get back on their feet and get back to work within a year.

Six months after they reopened their shop, though, the Christensons were hit with another shocker when Chris, while coaching his son’s baseball team, ruptured a disc and had a piece of it detach and lodge in his spinal column, neces-sitating surgery. “A lot of our commissioned work is in wedding rings, and those kinds of deadlines have to be met,” recalls Shani. “Chris was laid up for almost six months. We kept a low cot in the studio, where he was able to keep working. He nev-er missed a deadline!”

“I would say that these experiences only strength-ened our resolve. Through our love and passion for

Real Estate Magazine September 17, 2010 to September 30, 2010 Page 3

Celtic Creations suffered a major fire that erupted in the Jarvis-Nichols building in Mendocino on January 8, 2008. Susie Long photo.

Chris Christenson worked to finish jewelry commis-sions laying flat on the floor of the studio for several weeks while recovering from unexpected back surgery

in 2009. Photo provided.

Shani working on chainmail. Chris Christenson photo. Drawing for Amaterasu.

Page 4 Real Estate Magazine September 17, 2010 to September 30, 2010

one another and our work we have overcome these bumps in the road to follow our dreams,” says Chris.

It was during that second “shocker” as Chris was being wheeled in for surgery that he real-ized that there was a possibility that he may not wake up again. Of his epiphany, Chris recalls, “I would be devastated if I had never made the attempt to follow my dreams.”

For almost twenty years Chris has been dream-ing of making exotic, fine art metal clothing and lingerie, incorporating precious materials like silver, gold and gemstones. “I had a vision of strength and beauty, shining in the darkness. I imagined creating complete ensembles that would empower the wearer, a kind of magical armor.”

Chris shares, “We didn’t ever feel like we could stop making the jewelry that we made our living on and put an enormous amount of time and money into making these outfits that we didn’t have a market for yet.” He adds, “Through the course of our career, our lives, and taking care of a family, we just never felt we could take the risk of dropping everything to pursue our vision.”

With the surgery behind them, Chris and Shani threw themselves into this new work, and made a big splash recently at the September First Friday celebration at Northcoast Artists Gallery, where they presented an exciting runway fash-ion show of their new project, Metal Body Art. The new work is both provocative and exotic, and glitters with gemstones such as amethyst, citrine, and garnets, as well as fine silver, and fired glass enameling. The Christensons have taken their passion for jewelry construction a step further, creating wearable art that reflects the power and the symbolism of ancient world cultures. Chris offers, “A friend of ours said that ‘Metal Body Art shines with the passion of its creators,’ and that rang very true for us. We have so much passion for what we do and others can feel this in our work as well.”

“Brigit’s Armor,” the first of these one-of-a-kind fashions, was created by Chris expressly for Shani. The piece has won an award for Best Armor from Beyond Fantasy Magazine. Brigit was a Celtic goddess of fire, poetry, healing, child-birth, and most appropriately, metalsmithing.

“Brigit was born at dawn, and her fire represents the spark of life,” Shani’s sister Kelsie Hubik collaborated with the couple on the construc-tion of this and other Metal Body Art outfits.

Another body armor outfit created by the Celtic Creations studio is called “Kegan’s Fire.” In Gaelic the name Kegan means “ bright and shining flame”. This ensemble, symbolizing the element of fire and the archetypal fire goddess celebrated by many cultures, features Chatham rubies, garnets, cubic zirconium, and black suede.

Shani designed a piece called “Druantia,” a Celtic forest goddess known as “Queen of the Druids” symbolizing protection, knowledge and

creativity. Druantia is often seen as the eternal, wise, and knowledgeable mother, the one who guides the seeker to his/her true path. The outfit incorporates tourmaline, green quartz, fluorite, peridot and green suede.

One of the new wearable art pieces presented in the show at Northcoast Artists is based on Amaterasu mikami, the Japanese Sun Goddess whose name means “shining heaven”. She was so bright and radiant that her parents sent her up the Celestial Ladder to heaven, where she has ruled ever since. This outfit was created with sterling and fine silver, citrine, ametrine and black suede.

In order to make their dream of magical armor come true, the Christensons recycled their scraps of silver, which they had been saving for twenty years. “We were able to recover almost five hundred ounces of silver to use in the outfits,” Shani explains. She estimates that each outfit represents between three hundred to four hundred hours of labor to create. “Chris‘s mantra throughout these long hours has been, ‘People don’t even know!’ referring to the sheer amount of tedious work needed to create these wearable works.”

Chris shares, “The majority of our income is made creating custom wedding rings and we are usually booked three to four months in advance on orders. The body suits take between three hundred and four hundred hours each outfit. It’s a huge risk to our income to stop taking orders for a long enough time to create these outfits. So that is why it was only a dream for twenty years.”

Enjoy a personal look at the unique jewelry art of Chris and Shani Christenson by visiting their shop, Celtic Creations, above Gallery Bookstore at the corner of Kasten and Main streets in Mendocino, or by clicking on their jewelry web-site at www.celticcreations.com, or on their new website, www.metalbodyart.com. The Metal Body Art exhibit at Northcoast Artists Gallery, 362 Main Street in Fort Bragg, is through September 28. For more information, con-tact Chris and Shani Christenson at the Celtic Creations studio by phone at 707-937-1223.

Chris and Shani would like to thank all the wonderful friends and family who helped them present their art in such a unique and exciting way dur-ing the fashion show premier of Metal Body Art, includ-ing Jocelyn DeChenne and Marrinella Brey of Mantra’s Affirmation for Hair in Mendocino, makeup artist Liz Hetherington and Amy Wall from Mendocino Beauty, musicians Sean VanBuskirk and Dan Mellow from Hanging Chad, and Meaghan Grijalva Davis who MC’d the show.

Right to left: Melinda Miller-Klopfer as Druantia, Jessica Vanbuskirk as Amaterasu, Shani Christenson in Brigit’s

Armor, and Samantha Horn in Kegan’s Fire. Chris Christenson photo.

This Celtic Creations Heart Shield Ring has a sterling silver band with 15K yellow gold, black glass enameled Celtic knots, and is set with a purple sapphire. The interweaving lines of the Celtic knots and the shield setting symbolize eternal love and

protection. Hap Sakawa photo.

Brigit’s Armor, shown here with digital embellishments by Rhonda Napoleon, won an award for Best Armor Jewelry from

Beyond Fantasy Magazine. Chris Christenson photo.