Lyndsey Rieple is a jewelry designer and metalsmith living in Jackson Hole.  Her inventiveness and unique perspective make her a great person to look to whenever you may be having an artistic block, or are looking for a fantastic piece of jewelry to give someone. In her personal jewelry, she uses natural materials such as wood and leather, as well as found objects and various metals. The three pieces displayed to the left show some of her fantastic pieces. I have had the great pleasure of her friendship for more than ten years and am so glad to have her as my first interview on Moss Pocket.

1. Describe your typical 9 to 5, and describe your typical 5 to sleep. How do they connect? How do they differ? How do they influence each other?
My 9-5 is working as a bench jeweler and fabricator for a small jewelry company in a resort town. My 5 to sleep involves eating, climbing, hiking, experiencing the mountains, friends, enjoying smells, and falling asleep to movies. They connect in that my choice to live here was for my daytime job and the relationships, activities,
discoveries, experiences, and dream building have been a result of experiencing this place and chapter of my life. My 9-5 and 5-sleep differ or detach from one another when I just need to go get new eyes and ears after looking at tiny jewelry pieces and hearing equipment running all day.
 

2. What drives you to create?
Creating allows me to be myself in my fullest capacity. It's when making choices comes with ease in all it's mystery, failures, successes, and developments. I know I am a designer, a creator, and seeing how that is panning out through my life is incredibly fulfilling.

3. What creation are you most proud of? Why?
Dang it. It's a toss up between "Flip Ring" and "Housed Pendants." They both involve materials that are found, recycled, and tell a story and are incorporated into an interactive design. I am proud of them because they aren't "one liner" jewelry (just made that up right now) where a piece of metal wraps around the finger displaying some stone of design which can be quite lovely, but this ring can flip, change orientation, and can be toy-like all while being made with materials that are a story within themselves! This is exciting to me. Similar for the pendant, metal encases a piece of organic sage brush with no glue or bezel. It is held with tension, rivets, and grooves and since sage brush is a special material for me, I am proud to have it framed so elegantly within a unique design.

4. If someone approached you tomorrow and said they would pay for your time and materials to create a ten piece series, how would you approach it? What would the theme be? The pieces?
Yes! The theme would be "Bridging Worlds." I am fascinated with people's worlds. We all have a different one while living on the same planet. My world involves a lot of different places, people, interests, and directions. So when I cross into another's world such as a climber's and get to use the gear and dive into this sport, a piece of jewelry emerges. These climbers, including myself now, climb in the West. The Wild West. Using leather, rivets, and carabiners, I want to make a cuff bracelet. Leather and rivets for the West materials and carabiners as the clasps for the climber; an interesting bridging of worlds. Other examples include: my association with wood, country, and metal, urban; using this broad demographic I would want to create more flip rings and housed pendants using all types of woods, stones, and metals. The price of materials would range drastically while the design would roughly stay the same...I relate
this to people and how our worlds may have different values but we are very much the same.

5. What shape inspires you most? What material inspires you most?

The human shape inspires me most.
The absence of a material's contrast inspires me most. With wood, I want metal. With diamond, I want wood. With fabric, I want rivets.
 

6. How does other people's work influence yours?
Others' work influences mine by seeing or experiencing (smell, touch,etc)  what I want or don't want in my own work and why. This is an on going process of creating something new from already existing principles, ideas, approaches, and concepts. In the words of my high school art teacher, "Art cannot be created in a vacumm."

7. What kinds of things do you require in order to create? (Exercise? Food? Reading? etc)

I require breathing. Sometimes I create in my dreams, sometimes I create without eating or drinking or doing anything else.
 

8. Where do you think your talents come from? Biology or the way your life has progressed?
My talents come from my parents, how I utilize opportunities, and my higher power.

9. How do you get your work out there?
Painfully and reluctantly. I like to wear it and talk about it. Otherwise, FB, art shows, and talking to people.

10. What is your ideal way to represent yourself and your work? A shop? An online store?
I am still trying to answer this one for myself, but I think it would be my own shop with someone else running the business side.

11. Out of all the mediums you have tried, why jewelry and metalsmithing?
I choose jewelry and metalsmithing because of its design capabilities, how the art form is displayed on my favorite shape, and the variety of meanings for the wearer. I am also more comfortable working small; it presents the types of challenges I like to overcome.