2003 Individual Artist Fellowship Recipient

Maxine Rosenthal
Wilmington
Emerging Professional, Crafts

Maxine Rosenthal's three-dimensional jewelry takes its inspiration from architecture and textile, particularly that of other cultures, including Egyptian, Mayan and Aztec. The result is pieces that often can be appreciated from all angles, in both a visual and tactile sense.

The artist, who until about six years ago was a 60-hour-a-week corporate manager, first started her second career as a "serious hobby, work[ing] to sell on a limited basis." Her medium was polymer clay, her inspiration, the lack of jewelry to go with a sweater she wanted to wear. Having worked with clay as a potter, she found the new material very different-and not to her liking. After finishing the project, she put the clay away. Later, after seeing jewelry made of glass and polymer clay at the glass museum in Corning, N.Y., she began to tinker again with the material she had rejected.

She worked first with polymer, then combined it with other materials. "Sometimes polymer clay [by itself] is not taken as seriously as it deserves to be. I wanted to explore combining it with other materials and make it more acceptable. As time went on, I became more and more involved with metals," she says.

Rosenthal took classes, pursued her own independent study and combined personal observations from her travels to develop her technical skill and efficiency as well as her trademark designs.

Her jewelry, mostly in sterling and sometimes combined with stones, is one of a kind. She has exhibited and sold her work locally at the Delaware Art Museum and the Blue Streak Gallery, through her website and at the six to eight retail shows she does per year. She will be exhibiting her work at the Delaware Foundation for the Visual Arts' Art and Antiques Show at Hagley Museum March 22 and 23.