Sophia Sophia: Color as Material
It’s the coldest day of the year when I pull up to Sophia Sophia’s studio in Downtown Binghamton, and the short walk from my car to her door has me frozen solid. Sophia answers the door with a smile, and I walk into the cozy studio she shares with her husband and fellow artist, Wally. The studio is small and warm, and Sophia pours me a cup of coffee. Pictures of new designs lay around her drafting table, and the drawers are filled with her brightly colored, distinctive pieces.
(Photos by KT Kanazawich)
We sit down at a table and complain about the weather, as any good Upstaters would on the coldest day of the year. Or really any day in general. She is wearing a pair of her gold hoop earrings with three purple-enameled triangles dangling equidistant on the bottom of the circle. Full disclosure: I have been enamored with Studio Sophia Sophia’s jewelry since she first launched her brand in 2014, with its bright colors and distinctive shapes that are bold yet natural. We sit down to talk about her journey to becoming one of Binghamton’s most distinctive artists.
TRIPLE CITIES CAROUSEL: Start at the beginning. How did you start making art, and why did you start making jewelry?
SOPHIA SOPHIA: I knew I wanted to go to art school, and ended up going to Pratt in New York, and that’s where I took my first jewelry class. I was an undecided Fine Arts major, and my jewelry professor was just awesome. I wanted to keep learning from her. She was so cool, and I kept taking classes and I fell in love with making jewelry for myself. It was awesome; it was a new material that I had never worked with before.
I decided to major in it; I was so drawn to it. At Pratt, it was mostly learning the techniques, the traditional arts of metalsmithing and enameling. My undergrad was learning the craft. When I graduated, I was like, “What should I do?” and I ended up working for a fashion jewelry company in Midtown Manhattan. And that’s a whole different world [from the art world]. I was designing for companies like Old Navy and Macy’s. You design with beads, and then it gets sent to China to be mass-produced. You know all the huge department stores that sell necklaces for ten bucks? TCC: Yeah.
SS: I was the designer. But it was really simple designs, and you have no creative say in anything.
TCC: They’re just like, make something with these beads?
SS: Yeah, they have samples or images that they like, and they just say “Here, change this necklace a few beads.” I mean it was a sweet gig, but I felt creatively stifled. At the time, I was over living in New York. I had a studio, but by the time I got home from this job, I was never going to the studio. So then I decided I should go to grad school because—also, in undergrad I never really knew what my work was about. A lot of people had big conceptual ideas, like “I’m making work about the loss of my family,” or making work about sustainability, and I was making abstract shapes. I never had a strong conceptual point of how I could explain myself. I didn’t know. I thought if I went to grad school I could figure out why I’m making this sort of work.
I went to grad school in Rhode Island, at the Rhode Island School of Design, in the jewelry and metalsmithing program. But there I did no metal work. They strip you down to trying to find the core of what you are interested in. It was two years of experimentation and finding out I was obsessed with color and shape. I remember specifically there being this project where our [professor] told us to find ten different materials. I was gathering yarn, and other crafty kind of stuff but I had color coded them into ten different colors. My professor was this crazy, awesome, stylish woman, so intimidating because she’s so smart and cool. We had a critique and she said, “You’ve only got one material,” and I was freaked out because I had all of these materials, and she looked at me and said, “Your material is color.”
Ever since that day, it just clicked. As a child I was always into super colorful patterns and clothes and that sort of thing. So, yeah, in grad school I was doing a
lot of painting and then I started doing self-portraits. Then I started making these weird self-portrait necklaces. I was screen printing my face and making them into necklaces, commenting on narcissism. It was just this experimentation route that took me to a place that I think was cool for the time that I was in, but I was in this bubble.
When I left college, I was like, “What the fuck am I doing?” I was making these weird puppets, and I was just wondering what I was doing. I didn’t want to go back to New York, so I applied for this grant to go to a puppet workshop, because I was super into sewing and I thought I could make a career making puppets or something like that. So I came back to Binghamton to figure things out. I got a studio under Uncorked Creations. But then I decided I didn’t want to go to that puppet workshop, so I spent the money [from] the grant on my jewelry workbench and supplies, to start a studio and get back into metalworking.
I started doing First Fridays, and people were really into it, and I learned about the whole crafts show scene. I found out about the Ithaca and Syracuse markets and much larger shows. After that I started getting into wholesale, where you sell your work to stores. But I learned all of this as I was going, because in art school if you talk about how to make money, or how to run a business—no. You don’t talk about that. I had to teach myself everything about the business side of stuff.
TCC: Nobody likes to talk about money when you’re an artist.
SS: Yeah.
TCC: “It’s about the art, man.” What about the bread, man?
SS: Yeah. That’s what I was worried about—how was I going to survive making these weird dolls? No, it’s not going to happen. Community-wise, I worked at Lost Dog forever and I would wear my stuff, and just by bartending and meeting new people, word of mouth—I have a lot of sales just from local people, which is really cool.
TCC: How would you describe your aesthetic?
SS: My aesthetic is definitely super colorful, asymmetrical, geometric, organic, bold.
TCC: What draws you to that?
SS: I don’t know. I can still remember outfits from when I was little. A lot of it is fashion-based. I don’t make clothes at all, but I’m really inspired by fashion designers. Mostly the fabrics. There’s something about color and shapes; I can’t explain it, it’s just who I am. That’s something that really translates into my work. I think about an outfit, and then what pair of earrings would go with that outfit. I think about clothes; I look at clothes. I hardly look at other jewelry designers for inspiration, just because it doesn’t do anything for me. I’ve just always been drawn to color.
TCC: It definitely stands out. I was at a Driftwood show the other weekend in Ithaca wearing the earring I bought from you last year, and so many people came up to me asking where I had gotten it.
SS: That’s awesome. I think [things like that] have definitely helped me. A lot of designers use stones that are colorful, or colorful plastic, but there’s not a lot of people that are doing what I do with resin, and I think that’s helped me stand out.
TCC: What is the process that you use? I’ve never stopped to ask but I’ve always wondered what your jewelry is made out of.
SS: I use sterling silver and brass, and the brass can also be gold-plated. I fabricate all of the shapes by hand. I have some pieces that are cast, which means I made them in wax first and then metal. I do all the soldering, polishing, and finishing, and then the very last step is the resin. It’s a clear mixture, and I use acrylic paints and powder pigments to make the color. Everything is color customizable which is cool. People will go on my website and pick the style, and if they want it in black they can get it in black, because a lot of people are afraid of color. But you can do that all on my website.
TCC: That’s cool. Your pieces are very bold. When I see someone wearing your work, I know they’re wearing your work. It stands out. Is that something you think about?
SS: Yeah, I guess. I’ve always been into accessories. I used to be a little more timid
about making larger pieces. I love making earrings—they’re my thing. I was hesitant about it at first because a lot of people are scared. They’ll say, “Oh, my neck isn’t long enough,” or whatever. I started to realize I was getting ahead because I was staying true to my vision, so I decided I was going to make what I want to make and if people like it, cool, and if they don’t, whatever. But it’s interesting, because right now in fashion there’s a trend of huge earrings, so I don’t even feel like I’m doing anything crazy ’cause it’s in right now.
TCC: You were ahead of the train!
SS: Yeah, and the whole mix-and-match, two different earrings, that’s really in right now. The asymmetrical thing. I’ve been into that for a while, but now it’s really caught on. It’s cool to be part of something larger that’s happening, but staying true to my vision.
TCC: What drew you to jewelry instead of painting, or puppet making, or all the other things you tried?
SS: For one it was making jewelry for myself that I wanted but couldn’t find anywhere. I would have a vision of what I wanted, and I thought to myself, “I can figure out how to make this!” Another part of it was learning the material. It was really challenging to work with metal because I had never done that before. The challenge of learning a technique and trying to master it. If I think about the work I did when I first started—it was horrible. It’s a skill, it’s a craft. I love that I’m still using the same techniques that have been used since the beginning of time. I use very minimal tools. I’m very into it. People tell me to use computers, blah blah blah, and I say “No, I would never!” There’s already so much [media technology] is in my life. When I’m at the bench, the simplicity of the materials and process takes me away from everything.
TCC: The pieces you make are bold, but not in a digital way. I think of a primal feel, especially with the pieces that look like feathers or daggers. The juxtaposition of sharp and soft lines is very interesting.
SS: I use really simple techniques and shapes, but put them into a more complex composition. But if you break it down, it’s all very simple shapes.
TCC: That says something in and of itself. The simplicity of the design makes you know immediately what it is. Something that I’ve noticed with pictures of your work is that you often use nontraditional models. You work with KT Kanazawich a lot for pictures. How did that come about?
SS: I knew of KT. We were never friends but I knew of her from Binghamton. I messaged her, and said I needed people to shoot these [pieces] on. Through her blog, she’s always posting pictures of friends. I just said, “This person looks cool, and this person looks cool,” and so on. I would give them a piece of jewelry in return for modeling, and then we’d just have a glass of wine. It was really fun. I didn’t know what to expect at first, but when the first images came out I knew she was going to be a person I was going to work with for a really long time. She’s my go-to.
The models, yeah. I like interesting looking people. Beautiful, interesting people, with little quirks here and there. I’ve started approaching people I want to model for me. That was a little weird at first. I was in Strange Brew a few months ago. I saw this girl walking down this street, and Wally scopes people out too, and he shouted, “Her! Her!” So I ran down the street after her. I went up to her and said, “I think you’re beautiful and I’m always looking for models.” At first they’re like, “Yeah, you’re a freak.” But she ended up emailing me, and she’s going to be one of my models for my spring/summer shoot.
TCC: Alright. Last question: what’s your favorite donut flavor? SS: Definitely Boston creme.
Sophia Sophia’s new collection will drop in early June, but you can see all of her work and order your own pieces at studiosophiasophia.com. You can also follow her on Instagram at @studiosophiasophia.
