Lisa Kim

In her early twenties, Lisa Kim enjoyed making Christmas baskets for family and friends. One year she wire-wrapped Swarovski crystal snowflakes on a basket’s handle to give to a friend who worked in accessory design. Her friend’s response: “You should make jewelry!” As enticing as that thought was, Kim was focused on her animation career. She had studied at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and was working her way up the ladder. Ten years ago, though, she finally decided to explore jewelry manufacturing. “I took a wax carving class and fell in love with it,” she says. 

“I make relatively large statement pieces,” she explains. “Jewelry requires precious finite materials. If you are going to invest in a piece, I think it should be something that you absolutely love and that makes other people stop in their tracks to say, ‘Holy cow! What is that??’ And then you have a conversation about it … Life is too short for boring jewelry.” Kim also sets out to offer an alternate view of femininity. “Teeth, claws, and wings are adaptations that allow powerful animals to survive and thrive,” she says. “These forms are a natural choice for jewelry that expresses a woman’s power.”

Now a storyboard artist on Velma, Kim believes that “animation is storytelling, and this skill has helped me build a story into my jewelry collections.” She has a great love for mythology and uses it to create a spiritual aspect to her jewelry based on The Hero’s Journey. Kim creates her jewelry with a combination of lost wax casting and metal fabrication, as well a technique used to create reliefs in sheet metal with hammer blows. Most of her designs can be produced in any metal, and she also does custom designs. “I really enjoy working with clients to create pieces they truly love,” she says. “It’s often a new experience for my clients, and when I look at it through their eyes, I always think of how lucky I am to be able to pursue my practice in this art form.”

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