Meet Amy Lubbs

Today we’d like to introduce you to Amy Lubbs.

Amy, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Working with my hands and creating art has always fallen somewhere between passion and compulsion, so I’ve been making jewelry and crafting for as long as I can remember. In fact, I still have the first piece of jewelry I made myself at 6 or 7 years old (a choker necklace made from a green shoelace and a daisy-shaped button). My development into the artist I am today has been gradual and organic and started with me as just a little goober using jewelry as a way to process and relate to the world around me.

As I got older, I realized that wearable art felt like the truest way for me to both expresses myself and to connect with others. I constantly explored more and more techniques, styles, and materials to better accomplish that sense of honest expression and connection. Through high school and college, I sold my jewelry in coffee shops, at little pop-up craft shows, art shops, online, and did lots of freelance custom orders. Most recently, I was fortunate enough to connect with The Cactus Coven in Longmont and started selling a jewelry collection made from bones (primarily snake vertebrae), which has some of my favorite pieces yet.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think any creative career comes with challenges, and for me, the toughest thing to contend with is finding the stamina for the day-by-day chugging away. Finding your way in a creative career involves a huge amount of adaptation, endurance, and patience. Things often won’t work the first time, so you have to try something, learn from it, tweak your approach, try again, learn, tweak your approach… It pays off, but it can be tedious and absolutely exhausting to keep trying when it feels like nothing is working and your insecurities are staring you down. But I’ve learned that you just have to keep beating your head against it so that you’re ready to jump when opportunities do arise.

We’d love to hear more about your art.
I’m a self-employed artist, specializing in wearable art. I love to showcase materials that are typically considered strictly functional or too creepy/ugly to be put in jewelry. I’ve been told that I have a unique talent for integrating rusted metal, hardware, and bones into my pieces so well that it takes a second look to recognize just what the material is.

My art is informed heavily by my passion for science, which gives me a different perspective from the average jewelry artist. My Archaeology degree gives me a deeper understanding of and reverence for self-adornment. While visual beauty is absolutely part of self-ornamention, it also has the power to tie us to our personal histories, our families, and the physical world that we live in. The objects we decorate our bodies with communicate who we are, both to others and to ourselves, and I try to honor the weight of that in my art.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
The first thing I would say is being genuine in my art. I find it so crucial (not just philosophically, but also practically) to make art for the sake of growth and expression, not just to have a marketable product at the end. When I give myself the space to have an honest conversation with my art, people are far more interested in and moved by the pieces I make.

The second thing is being open to opportunities and willing to push out of my comfort zone. It can feel really vulnerable and scary to put yourself out there when opportunities come along, but so many of my successes have happened when I pushed through the fear and took a leap.

Pricing info:
I have a large inventory ranging from small $20 pieces all the way up to big, showy pieces in the hundreds. I also love doing custom orders and I have a lot of experience working within a customer’s budget. So whatever you have in mind, just shoot me an email at lubbsamy@gmail.com and I’m sure I can get you the perfect piece of jewelry!

Contact Info:

• Email: lubbsamy@gmail.com
• Instagram: @amylubbs

Image Credit:
Amy Lubbs

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