Kimberly’s current jewelry work is a combination of her backgrounds in sculpture and biology. It involves the detailed and obsessive process of creating surfaces that are inspired by the patterns and textures found in nature. “I grew up in a potter’s studio, and clay is the foundation of my sculptural work. Porcelain’s strength, fragility and translucency make it seductive, and I find in its willingness to transform there is optimism and potential.”
Kimberly lives on Hawaiʻi Island with her family, where her work continues to be influenced by the systems of the natural world and ocean.
Her business, Blue Cinder Biologica, is the porcelain jewelry branch of the studio business she shares with her husband, Shelby B. Smith, also an established artist. Blue Cinder Studio, shares their works in multi-media sculpture, and wheel thrown clay designs.
My work is influenced by both the biology and the sociology of the natural world. I have a deep interest in the aspects of both technology and nature in human lives, and how we respond to the competition, or balance, between the two. I continue exploring the fragility of “industry”; using glass, ceramic, and steel for them as essential materials for crafting pieces about the often uncomfortable interface of humanity and nature, as they are keystone materials in the evolution of human industrial processes.
In my work I consider the idea of ingenuity, both human and nature’s. Due to our cultural associations with insects, and our long history of observing their behavior as a way of understanding our own, I have found that insects are an effective–if not poetic–way to talk about human behavior, and our relationship to both industry and nature.
View Kimberly’s work HERE