Meet the artist 🥀 Hi, I’m Nora, the artist behind Sweet Marcel and the person hand sculpting, firing, polishing, finishing, packaging (etc etc) your silver jewelry. Whether you’ve been with Sweet Marcel since the beginning, watching my work grow and evolve, or you’re just now discovering it – welcome! If you have a minute (or maybe three), I would like to introduce myself. I’m a multidisciplinary artist with degrees in art history and photography and have always found it difficult to confine myself to a single art practice. In December 2019, I began sculpting tiny charms, each smaller than a dime, out of polymer clay, which I then meticulously painted by hand. [SLIDE 2]  I was immediately drawn to the scale - I always loved combing the miniatures aisle of Michaels, purchasing impossibly tiny ladders and garden shovels that I had no use for. I found both value and humor in spending so much time on such a tiny sculpture. The first time I wore the necklace of these charms, I was commissioned to make a custom necklace for a sales associate I met at the Doc Martens store in Chicago. [SLIDE 3]  That sales associate emboldened me to vend these charms at an upcoming market, where I was already planning on selling custom jackets and patches. [SLIDE 4-5] The market was scheduled for late March 2020 and was ~indefinitely postponed~. I moved to LA on a whim in July 2020, in search of a milder winter. Here, about a year after my move, I decided to pick up where I left off in Chicago.  Sweet Marcel looked much different in its inception. I was inspired by my love for kitsch and whimsy (think: Madonna Inn, Portia Munson). I meticulously sculpted and painted my tiny sculptures; dozens of frogs, blueberries, mushrooms, strawberries, spending hours on each tiny charm. [SLIDE 6-10] I noticed my friends and colleagues were amused by the outcome, and shocked by the amount of work that went into each piece, but maybe confused by the high pricepoint. Although I am still proud of these miniature sculptures, at the end of the day, the product was polymer clay, painted with acrylic, and sealed with polyurethane - all plastic.  (continued in pinned comment)