CityView Magazine

in support network for raising their toddler boys, Luke and Elijah. Bailey is a member of the board of directors at Cape Fear Studios, where her FTCC students held a show this summer. She also leads workshops at the Fayetteville Museum of Art. “There is great community here,” Bailey says. “I don’t know if things have changed or I’ve changed, but there’s a lot going on in Fayetteville. “A lot of the success that I’ve had is because I’m home.” Her husband Brian built a studio behind their Haymount home. Between teaching, making art and raising two small children, she travels to shows around the country. She has been invited to participate in an American Craft Council show and was featured in Metalsmith Magazine. And here lately, she’s been thinking even bigger (literally) and is contemplating creating pieces that might resemble something closer to sculpture than jewelry. Metal, you see, is all in the making. Ever since she discovered metal Blogging to banging metal www.ericastankwytchbailey.com July 29, 2008 “As an artist I am often making subtle transitions without even really realizing the changes have occurred. Then one day I look back and feel like maybe I have left something behind. But what I realize on days like today during conversations, energetic and open that I have not left anything behind, my work is simply evolving, the concepts are becoming more refined.” 24 | Oct • Nov 2008 during art school at East Carolina University, there was something about it. What seemed cold, unyielding and inflexible at first touch turned out to be just the opposite: malleable, warm, even intimate. In her hands, flat metal became a pair of earrings, a bracelet or necklace someone might wear year after year. And that’s what captured her imagination: “To create what people wear and then take with them through all their lives,” especially women. Look closely, and you might discover there is more to Bailey’s bracelets, necklaces and earrings than surface beauty. One of her pieces is a beautiful necklace of airy silvery knots. It looks whispery and light but is actually quite heavy, a sly comment on the conflicting expectations placed on women. And then sometimes, a broach is just a broach. But even then, there’s no telling what inspired it, the swirls of a broken shell discarded on the beach or a branch from her backyard magnolia. “I actually want you to feel that,” Bailey says. “It’s still, for me, about flow and pattern and texture.”CV

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