Carisa Passalacqua began making nature inspired jewelry and pottery in 2018. Her signature medium is porcelain jewelry with 24 karat gold luster. With a background in illustration and photography, her eye to observe things often overlooked by others has become a focus in her art and nature in particular is her biggest influence. Now supporting herself solely on her fine art, she hopes to continue selling her art and widening her audience.
Nature photography
To Carisa, being outside in nature is the ultimate healing thing. “I just love being outside in creation. It’s very peaceful and calming and it keeps me balanced.” Due to spending so much time outdoors she adapted what some call an usual eye to look at things in nature from different angles and fixate on details overlooked by most people. She first explored this love through photography. “I focused on small things like layers of oxidation, I love bark texture. Macro photography is my favorite.”
Alongside her jewelry, Carisa is also hoping to expand her love of nature photography into a photo business. She currently sells large prints of some of her photographs and also photo cards but ideally she’d like to work with people in natural photo sessions. “I’d love to do some freelance work with families or anyone looking to be photographed in nature.”
Whimsical reversible art
Carisa’s jewelry has a lot of whimsy to it. From a large ginkgo leaf necklace, to butterfly earrings, to landscape pendants, her style is full of movement and texture. “I use an assemblage of natural materials like semi precious stones and metal, I love using all natural materials.” Her go to combination as of late has been porcelain jewelry with 24 karat gold luster. The gold brings another layer of dimension and has a more metallic, less shiny look to it. Carisa emphasized that using this gold with her other natural materials gives her jewelry the earthy look she desires.
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One of the signature features in Carisa’s art is the reversibility of it. One of the motifs often revisited in her art are images of cats with their teeth bared. However, displayed on the back of those pieces are the cat’s tails. “All of my new pieces are reversible, that way the story continues.” These pieces inspired her narrative jewelry collection which include earrings that show animals traveling from one earring to the other or landscape that moves from front to back on a pendant. “I’m really excited about my narrative jewelry. I used to do a lot of narrative art on my pottery so transitioning that to jewelry has been exciting.”
A moment of joy
As Carisa’s jewelry has become more popular, she has thoroughly enjoyed seeing people’s reaction to her art. In a world desperately in need of lightheartedness, a laugh or a smile goes a long way. Carisa noted that a few of her customers have used her pieces as conversation starters. “I’ve had a couple people tell me the pieces they’ve gotten, the cat pendants, they’ve gotten more compliments on them than any other piece of jewelry.” All Carisa could hope for is that her jewelry brings joy to people and reminds them to take a break and enjoy the world around them.
