ARTIST STATEMENT & BIO

When asked about his work, Stone O’Daugherty will often simply smile and shrug, stating with asparkle in his eyes, “I just love rocks...”

Stone O’Daugherty was born in the U.S. in North Carolina and spent most of his childhoodgrowing up in Germany, South Korea, Maryland, California and Arizona. “As a child,”O’Daugherty says, “I collected more rocks than I was allowed to keep, oftentimes even more thanmy hands and pockets could hold.”

At an early age, O’Daugherty worked with his father restoring antique furniture and carving wood. This gave him a love of craftsmanship and an olde-world style attention to detail that is visible in his work today. O’Daugherty explored his relationship with art during high school and college through painting, sculpting, framing and music. He studied art and biology at Northern Arizona University, and,after several years of work in the medical field, went back to his first love. ..gems and minerals.

 O’Daugherty was soon traveling the United States to mine stones, and then carving and tumbling the specimens he found. Out of a desire to share his love for the stunning stones he collected, he began creating jewelry using simple wire-wrap techniques. After a few years, his wire work broke away from traditional wrapping techniques, and his ideas for using sheet started to brew. He took a few non-formal silver smithing classes in a friend’s studio, played with various methods, and soon found his niche. It was at this time, roughly six years ago, that the unique cold fusion techniques you see in his jewelry today began to take shape.

“I like to refer to myself as a tailor with silver,” says O’Daugherty. “That seems to capture it best.”

Today, O’Daugherty resides on Hawaii Island with his wife, Kelly Nafie, a non-profit development specialist, and his eleven year old son Bastian. He has a full-time workshop where he builds his pieces around unique and rare gems and minerals, as well as time-tested favorites (all blood and conflict free), using no heat, no solder and no glue.

O’Daugherty’s work has been featured in the Lapidary Journal (December 2006 and January 2007 issues) and the Tucson Museum of Art. It has been sold in select stores and galleries throughout the U.S., including New York, Arizona, California and now Hawaii.

“My love of gemology, mineralogy, and geology is first and foremost,” states O’Daugherty. “And my jewelry reflects this... an aesthetic ode to the stones themselves.”

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