The Blue Sea Artisans featured artist for the month of June is glass-blower and jewelry artist Stacey Siegel.
Stacey Siegel grew up with a strong attraction to glass. Her fascination grew from seed bead weaving, to stained glass and on to the hot glass world which eventually kept her interest. Working in a glass-blowing studio/gallery in Santa Fe, NM, she began her apprenticeship. While other glassblowers continued to strive to work on large glass pieces, Siegel’s interests turned adifferent direction. She gathered and manipulated less glass on her glass-blower pipe, worked smaller and eventually perfected her art developing a signature line of miniature perfume bottles and vases. This soon led her working on a torch. She taught herself to make hand-blown glass beads. Torch working glass beads is a much more efficient and smaller studio set up. The mobility of it allowed her to pack up her studio and move to the Big Island 26 years ago, where she set up her own home studio.
Here on the slopes of Mauna Loa in South Kona, surrounded by the lush tropical terrain, she is inspired to create her glass work. Siegel uses her own hand torched glass beads for her beaded jewelry, along with other glass components and metal fabrications. She has developed her own signature style of jewelry. Among her featured jewelry pieces are bracelets and earrings combining metal and glass blown bead components.
Stacey Siegel will be working at the gallery on Saturdays, June 3 and 17, 2023, and you can learn more about her unique process of creating her jewelry. The Blue Sea Artisans Gallery is located in the Keauhou Shopping Center Courtyard, 78-6831 Alii Drive, Kailua-Kona. For more information please call the gallery at 329-8000. The Gallery is open: Monday -Saturday 10 am – 6 pm, and closed on Sundays.