CityView Magazine

Below | Artist Erica Stankwytch Bailey at work in her studio, a cross between laboratory and gallery. a cross between laboratory, gallery and workshop where a motorhead might feel at home. When they were first dating, Bailey once went shopping with her husband Brian. At the checkout counter, other women accepted the clerk’s offer to keep the drinks or chewing gum they had just purchased in their handbags. Bailey asked to put the handful of drill bits she bought into her own purse. Brian Bailey just looked at her and said later, “That’s when I knew I loved you.” Erica Stankwytch Bailey is a wife, mother and metalsmith. She makes jewelry that is tiny and carefully etched in addition to huge pieces that aren’t so much meant to be worn but displayed. She has work, right now, in museums and galleries across the country, not to mention the permanent collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She teaches at Fayetteville Technical Community College and mentors others artists who want to market their work on the Internet, a new horizon for many older artists but a natural fit for someone who’s just as comfortable blogging as she is banging out pieces of metal. Bailey always wanted to be an artist, from the time she was a child growing up in Hope Mills. Her parents were – and still are – artistic, too. Bailey’s father, Mike Stankwytch, played bass for a popular local rock band called Badge. Her mother owns The Chopping Block, a hair salon on Owen Drive. In high school, Bailey earned a place at the prestigious North Carolina School for the Arts and, honestly, never expected to look back. To her surprise, Fayetteville turned out to be the perfect place for her three passions: family, art and teaching. She and her husband have parents and both sets of grandparents here, a built- Metal, you see, is all in the making. CityViewNC.com | 23

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