Woman finds her passion in jewelry making
WKYT, KY
OWENSBORO, Ky. — Paula Canant doesn’t just make jewelry. Canant makes beads, then uses them to make jewelry.
The former nurse makes glass or lampwork beads in the basement art studio at her Owensboro home.
“I let the glass do the work. I work below the flame,” said Canat while wearing the special glasses that allow her to see in the white-hot glare of her torch.
Fueled by propane and oxygen, the torch reaches temperatures as high as 2,200 degrees.She melts colored glass rods with the torch until they are “nice and hot and molten,” then builds the glass beads around steel welding rods coated with a substance similar to bisque.
Her basement is equipped with a special ventilation system and a bead kiln that begins the cooling process at 900 degrees.
“I cool it at a slow rate to ensure strength and durability,” Canant said.
Her three daughters advise her on color and design and watch her work, but they know not to sit directly in front of her torch or to ever touch anything on her workbench, she said.
“It may look cool, but it is still hot,” Canant said. “I’ve been burned many, many times because I have no patience.”
Canant, 42, is a native of Lebanon, Ky. She was a medic in the Air Force, but “the outside world wouldn’t let me do the things I did in the military.”
She became a travel agent, then a homemaker. Her husband, Kenneth, is an emergency room doctor.
Inspired by the cathedrals she saw while stationed in Spain, Canant took up working on stained glass about seven years ago.
Then she saw a lampwork demonstration at a shop in Louisville and was drawn to the idea of creating something so beautiful so quickly.
Three years into her new craft, Canant is getting some attention, her work can sell for upward of several hundred dollars.
She works full-time at it, but “it’s a job that doesn’t feel like a job,” Canant said.
Marguerite Esrock, director of the St. James Court Art Show in Louisville, came upon Canant’s work at a state program to promote Kentucky artists.
“She puts together really interesting and different elements in her jewelry,” Esrock said. “Her combinations are just real fresh and energetic.”
Canant has jewelry on display at Gallery 412, Brinker’s Jewelers and the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, where she recently taught bead-making workshops for children. Her work is for sale in galleries as far away as San Clemente, Calif. Kentucky First Lady Glenna Fletcher even owns some of her jewelry.
This is Canant’s first year to do juried craft shows, though. Her work will be for sale in a section of the St. James Court show in October.
Operated by five neighborhood associations and a Louisville church, the annual event is several juried shows in one. The event usually showcases the work of about 700 artists to an estimated 275,000 shoppers.
“She’s going to do great here,” Esrock said.
Canant adds her beads to little seashells, silver and macrame in wax linen and pearl cotton, “everything but the kitchen sink,” as she describes it, to create chunky and colorful jewelry.
Along with necklaces and bracelets, Canant makes earrings, cell-phone charms, canape knives and what her family calls “whoodoos,” flat beads worn as pins, decorated with funny faces and wild hair made of ribbon and other fibers.
“I used to make jewelry I thought everyone else would like,” Canant said. “Now I please me.”
After three years, Canant says she still has a lot to learn about the process.
“You can take a thousand classes. It doesn’t matter. When you are comfortable with glass, it’s practice,” she said. “It’s probably been the best therapy I’ve ever had in my whole life. “I’ve dabbled in just about everything artistically. This is my true love right here.”
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
