JENNIFER MAHAL -- In the Wings

A bark-like block of amber lays cradled in a silver bed. A

manacle-sized bracelet appears solid and feminine with its wrinkled

silver surface. Pearls drip from rectangular silver plates.

The jewelry of Edna Kuhta is strong, beautiful and far from delicate.

“I have a reputation of making big pieces,” said the Newport Beach

resident. “When anyone makes something over an inch square, they say ‘I

made an Edna.”’

Born on an island, as she likes to call Manhattan, Edna grew up on the

East Coast. At 5, she learned how to knit and started her love for

working with materials. In the 1940s, she had a hairdressing business --

“Edna, Your Hairdresser.”

She came to California in 1946, moving first to the San Joaquin

Valley. After a few stops in other Golden State cities, Edna and her

family moved to Newport Beach in the late 1950s (Her husband of 61 years

died in August).

“It was different then,” said the artist, who thinks the city is

getting more beautiful all the time. “We don’t realize we live on a

little village, living on the peninsula.”

Edna lives close to the Boudreau-Ruiz Gallery, where her work is on

display through March 3.

“I’m just inspired by everything I see,” said the grey-haired mother

of two. “It could be something completely different and I see a piece of

jewelry.”

Edna, who is also an accomplished textile artist, has had her jewelry

exhibited at the Maxwell Museum of Art in Albuquerque, N.M.; the Craft

and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles; the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana; and

the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland.

On Sundays, people attending Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in

Newport Beach look at the liturgical wall hangings she created. Edna made

five sets of hangings -- for all seasons -- out of silk, linen and wool.

Though she has quite a reputation for her liturgical art -- of 12

pieces shown at a national liturgical conference, five were hers -- and

her textile work -- the Haute Couture Societe gave her “Best of Show” in

the 1970s -- she prefers to work in metal now. Jewelry has been her

exclusive art form for the past 10 years.

“I have favorite children,” she said of her jewelry, “and I like to

see who gets them . . . A lot of thought goes into each piece”

Oftentimes, the material will dictate the form the jewelry takes. Edna

said when she looks at a piece of amber taken from the Baltic regions or

at the results of dropping a crucible of silver into water, she sometimes

can see what it will look like when it’s part of a finished product.

“I have to back up in creation to an actual starting point,” she said.

“I just let it grow. I think most of my designs are very organic and

free-spirited.”

The designs are like the woman who creates them. Edna is willing to

take chances in order to make interesting work. A necklace she wears was

made using a 20-ton hydraulic press. She takes advantage of the way metal

melts, the shape silver makes when dropped in water, the new materials on

the market.

“Once you know the vocabulary of silver, you can use it to your

advantage,” Edna said. “You know how it melts, know how it solders, know

how it forms.”

Learning the vocabulary of the materials is important. Edna -- who has

trained with artists Sister Corita at Immaculate Heart College and Hudson

Roysher, among others -- said she often works on four or five pieces of

jewelry at one time, letting the idea for one incubate while she creates

another.

“You can’t force it to do something against its nature,” she said of

the material. “Sometimes you find you’re in the middle of a piece and you

find you can’t force it to do what you want it to.”

Her textile experience can be found in the elaborate knotted cords

from which she hangs some of her heavier pendants. The cords, which she

makes in her own secret way, are a trademark, she said. Each piece she

creates is an original.

“You just make,” she said. “You want to work. You make and you wear it

and somebody sees it . . . I have often sold right off my neck as I was

wearing something.”

Jewelry making can get costly. Edna works with Baltic amber, glass

pieces made by a fellow artist, silver, pearls and more. A silver

bracelet can be as much as $70 to $80 in materials alone. That does not

include the time or equipment costs.

“Unfortunately, artists never get paid for the thinking time, the

design time,” Edna said.

* * *

Do you know a local artist, writer, painter, singer, filmmaker, etc.,

who deserves to get noticed? Send your nominee to In The Wings, Daily

Pilot, 330 W. Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627, by fax to (949) 646-4170 or

by e-mail to o7 [email protected]

* JENNIFER MAHAL is features editor of the Daily Pilot.