RESUME

OBJECTIVE: For the last several years, Roz Swartz Williams has been on a continuing journey of artistic discovery, developing her own distinctive style in mixed media jewelry design and papier mâché. She combines several techniques and media including wire sculpting, polymer clay, handmade textured paper, and surface ornamentation using acrylic and gouache paints, textile inks, gold, silver, and potpourri leaf, and various finishes. Each piece is a unique experience of color and texture.


TECNIQUES: Roz has a unique wire sculpting style that brings a new perspective to the medium. She uses pure copper, anodized colored copper, and non-tarnishing brass as a standard and offers custom work in sterling and 14kt gold, often mixing metals. Each piece makes a statement as unique as the wearer who chooses them. Collectors of her work tell her that people stop them on the street to ask, ”WHERE did you get that?”

She creates mokume gane “stones,” beads and elements that become the focal points for her wearable art pieces using translucent polymer clay layered with gold, silver, or potpourri leaf, and other materials such as paints, inks, chalk, and pulvers. These “stones” are then hand-sanded with increasingly fine grit sandpaper, buff polished to a high sheen or finished with a glaze of varnish, then elegantly wrapped in wire.

She has revived the ancient art of papier mâché, an interesting and somewhat neglected art form, and taken it to a new level, creating pieces that imitate the look of any surface—wood, ceramic, stone, mosaic, etc. Her vessels and other home accessories can be used functionally as well as ornamentally. She often incorporates paper elements into her jewelry pieces.


CURRENT
PROJECTS: Roz takes an avant-garde approach to her work and plans to publish a book on free-form wearable art. She continues to develop new techniques and push the envelope in jewelry design and is exploring new possibilities in working with sheet metals and handmade paper. She welcomes custom design and commission work.


ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Roz Williams is the Owner/Designer for Nonpareil, Ltd., of Annandale, Virginia, producing work from her home studio. She has done a number of private showings for individual clients and their guests, fine craft shows, and has done commission work for an interior designer. She is also a talented writer and graphic designer and has recently published her first novel entitled Fleeing Aerie (available from publisher AuthorHouse and online bookstores).


ORGANIZATIONS: Roz is a juried member of the Northern Virginia Handcrafters Guild and serves on its Board of Directors as 1st Director in charge of Education/Programs. She has also been a member of the National Association of Women Writers, the Publishers Marketing Association, and the Small Publishers Association of North America.