Market Vermont Artist: Jascha Sonis

See items for sale from Jascha Sonis

jascha-sonis Jascha Sonis creates “modern artifacts” in silver and gold jewelry, juxtaposing ancient and modern symbols. Utilizing her fascination with the combination of organic forms, ancient ethnic symbols, and current urban designs, she creates reversible pendants, necklaces and earrings.

Artist Statement

I usually work from my drawings and make textures from polymer clay using a technique called Tear Away. This process involves transferring my drawn images onto polymer clay with friction and then baking the plates in an oven.

I then use the textures to roll my designs into Precious Metal Clay, which consists of microscopic particles of fine silver smaller than 20 microns in size mixed with a nontoxic organic binder. As a point of reference, it would take as many as 25 of these particles clumped together to equal a grain of salt.
Once textured, the precious metal clay (PMC) is then formed into lentil beads, pendants, charms, earrings, etc. After sanding and refining I fire the PMC piece in a kiln. The nontoxic organic binder burns out and I am left with a piece of .999 fine silver jewelry.

The piece is then polished and often 24K gold is added by a ancient Korean technique called Keum-boo. This gilding technique uses thin sheets of 24K gold to form a permanent diffusion bond with the silver. The fine silver piece is heated to between 500 and 700 degrees. A thin sheet of 24K gold is carefully laid on the heated silver piece. Bamboo sticks, with polished agate ends, are then rubbed over the surface of the gold. An electron exchange is created by heat and pressure to create this permanent diffusion bond. I enjoy working with PMC as it comes from recycling silver, so in essence it is a green product.