Janet R. Sherman
Profile

Janet Sherman began making jewelry in her teens, and received her B.F.A. from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1979. She worked as Chief designer and Goldsmith at Jack Biser Jewelers, Inc. in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she also trained apprentice goldsmiths. In 1988, she moved to Gainesville, Florida and established her own studio, JRS Creations.
From then through the 1990's she was juried into a wide range of art festivals and shows coast to coast, receiving many awards and honors for her work. She also married and had two children. In 2003 she received her Masters of Education from the University of Florida.
In recent years she has primarily shown her work in featured presentations in gallery exhibitions, and continued producing numerous custom pieces for her private clientele.

"I'd rather be doing my work than trying to talk about it. I must sense or feel some sort of rhythm or theme in the stones or precious metals I work with. I rarely buy a gem to fit a certain piece. Instead, I like the sense of excitement the stone itself invokes , the images it conjures up, somehow defining its own final setting."

"My work is always evolving. Sometimes I am drawn to explore a new technique, sometimes I feel as though I have exhausted whatever style or theme I had been working on. At one time all my pieces seemed to be organic, with flowing forms and agate slabs, all color and contrasts. Then I became intrigued with texture and techniques of surface embelishment. That led me into a simpler, cleaner style that emphasised both the linear and geometric, with more mobile elements and defining combinations of gold and silver. As I pursued this theme, my pieces evolved into a three dimensional "puffed" mode. I became drawn to single decorative beads and pendants."

"Whatever the form, I try to create in space as fluently as I can sketch on paper. I'm striving for jeweled metaphors that mingle the organic and the technical in a form of lyric eloquence"