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Nadine Kam photos
elle Couture Jewellery’s creative director Lance Ishibashi and KCC’s Carol Sakihara at the opening of her students’ exhibition Friday night.

By Nadine Kam

elle Couture Jewellery creative director Lance Ishibashi made room in the new 909 Kapiolani jewelry boutique to share the floor with some talented young designers from Kapiolani Community College over the weekend, with the opening of an exhibition that will be on view through Jan. 29.

Lisa Shiroma’s copper “Star” necklace with satin ribbon.

I enjoyed looking at the pieces and entertained the thought of owning some of them because they are so different from what’s in the marketplace, which tends to follow big trends. Unfortunately, only a handful are actually available for sale, at a maximum of about $330. Given the class project nature of the work, many of them have sentimental attachment to the pieces they created, and you can’t put a price on that.

I loved Mia Takara’s brushed silver “Bear Fuzz,” but unfortunately, she’s not parting with it. It started as a ring with claws that wrap around the finger, but she found it difficult to attach the two pieces.

The students have access to limited tools and materials, but the show just proves how these are not handicaps when imagination is at work.

Since my story ran in the paper Thursday, some generous souls in the community have already offered donations of jewelry findings to the KCC program headed by artist Carol Sakihara. I’m sure more assistance would be welcome.

Jeremiah Skurtu with an “Industrial” ring he created. It was so large, they had to develop a special casting method for it. Below, he also wore a skull ring he created while attending high school in Texas.

Carol Sakihara and her KCC small-scale sculpture and jewelry design students.

Teacher Carol Sakihara found it difficult to imagine delicate Mia Takara would create such a lethal ninja star-inspired belt, titled “Ironic Protection,” but the artist said, “I’m weird like that.” She wants to continue making jewelry while studying to become an interior designer.

Lisa Shiroma, who had several pieces in the show, modeled Richard Sheeler’s copper collar. Lisa turned out to be the model for the evening because of her classic little black dress that went well with many of the silver pieces shown. One of her pieces, below, was a riveted copper shell that she titled, “Diablo … he put me through hell,” because of the 100 hours it took to construct. “I made it with paper first, with masking tape to show it could be done. But translating it to metal was a whole other story,” she said.

Susana Ng’s untitled necklace featured a sterling silver spoon pendant, representing the Big Dipper, spilling a constellation of stars.

I thought Caroline Young’s untitled copper work was a fun unisex piece that could be a creative alternative to the formal bow tie for a guy with a sense of style and sense of humor.

Akemi Oishi’s silver and pearl “Sakura” had the magic combination of originality and finesse sought by many consumers.

I was smitten by this quartet of rings, especially the quote bubble that says “yo.” It’s $70 for all, but you’d better have small fingers. I could barely fit my size 4 fingers through.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Lifestyle, Accessories, art, Auction, Jewels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.