The Strange Beautiful World of Rebecca Blankert
Rebecca Blankert embarks on a creative journey, blending myth, dreams, folk tales, and craftsmanship in her jewellery
Rebecca Blankert’s world is a strange and beautiful one—a place where dreams, nightmares, folklore, and UFO sightings can become wearable art and jewellery. Surprisingly, Rebecca describes herself as a literal person, but her work suggests she’s anything but.
Folk Tales and Bad Dreams
Rebecca, who just started working out of the Customs House Artisan Incubator in Port Hawkesbury, is fascinated with the bizarre, the mythical, and the downright otherworldly and that’s where her creativity finds its edge.
And an intimidating broach called Werewolf drew on the dream of a woman she knows. It is a wolf with chains in its mouth. That dream image was integral to a life-changing pivot for the woman.
The piece is made using chasing and repoussé, techniques Rebecca feels she excels at. These and other techniques she learned at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design (NBCCD).
School Was Transformative
Enrolling at the craft school for jewellery three years ago was key to wrangling a lot of her interests and obsessions together. Rebecca joined a small, intimate class. “Because we were such a small class—there were only four of us—we had the undivided time with our teachers.”
She said, “(Sculptor) Brigitte Clavette was teaching one of our classes, and it was just like boom, boom, boom. We would be transitioning through all these techniques every day so quickly. And man, I learned so much in the span of a couple months.” Kristyn Cooper and Erica Stanley were her other two instructors. “All three of them were so important to my development as a jeweller.”
They learned soldering, chasing, repoussé, casting, and even experimenting with 3D design tools.
And she feels confident she got first class training. She said, “That school is really incredible for pumping out technically sound jewellers.”
Love of Intricate Design
Rebecca is drawn to complexity in her craft. “I like fabricating really intricate, difficult designs.” But the problem with such designs, especially when you’re starting out, is that they can be labour intensive which makes being productive a challenge. “I really need to work on building designs that are smart.” By smart she means easier and faster to make, which is something she’ll need in her business.
Exploring and Experimenting is the Priority
While acknowledging that building a line of jewellery is important for her business, she’s not concerned about not having one yet. “I find that I have too many ideas in my head now and I don’t want to rush it.”
For now, she’s embracing the process of exploring those ideas and sending pieces to Anna-Marie Larson of Bear River Mercantile on the Bear River in Nova Scotia. “I have Anna and she’s like my wholesale person. But she’s also become my mentor.”
Rebecca said Anna bought some of her pieces for her shop and sold them all. Anna recently advised her to “just experiment and send me stuff and I’ll let you know if I’m interested in having it in the shop.” Rebecca said, “Having somebody giving me feedback so I’m not just in my own head all the time has been really advantageous.”
Customs House Provides Momentum for Launch
Now, the Customs House Artisan Incubator she is working out of is a joint project of the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design (CBCCD) and the Town of Port Hawkesbury. It provides affordable studio space, mentorship, and sales opportunities, and cushions participants from the initial risks of starting a craft business. “I had heard about Customs House last year through NBCCD and I was like, oh, that would be a dream.”
She says often arts and artisan students experience “a bit of a failure to launch because there’s not the resources and equipment that they need” to get started after graduation.
She says, “Right now I’m figuring out how I work within the studio instead of being instructed.” She says she had plenty of tools, training and enthusiasm coming out of school. What she needed was to keep it going. “I was so lucky they chose me because I was able to continue with that forward momentum.”
Jewellery with Purpose
But her vision goes beyond storytelling. She thinks she might also want her jewellery to solve problems. “I want to make some pieces for people with mobility issues and who can’t necessarily put on their own jewellery. I want to make that easier for them.”
She is also thinking of including micro-controllers—small, programmable electronic devices that could be embedded into a piece—like clap-activated devices for finding keys, for example.
A Curated Career
Rebecca has worked at a lot of different things. She’s worked in the oil fields in Northern BC (a terrible job), as a finishing carpenter for an architect (just a job), to being on a team cataloguing the life work of nuclear physicist and UFO-ologist Stanton Friendman (a right up her alley kind of job). Plus she has a fine arts degree from Mount Allison University in Sackville.
Right now she believes she has everything she needs lined up to launch a jewellery making and sculpting career. “I’m figuratively and literally building my ideal curated life and that takes research and time and I’m lucky that I’m able to do that.
