About

>> Welcome to Joy Road Jewelry <<

I'm Carrie Redfern, designer & maker. Allow me to share a little of my story, what inspires me to create, and why I trust in beauty... 

At age 19, my life began.

My road in life has been medicinal, not easy to swallow, but cathartic and healing nonetheless. High school and my first year of college were some of the hardest years of my life. I was angry, repressed, shut down & battling depression.

I was a lost soul, untethered and wounded.

And, yet, somehow, in the thick of that first dark night, miraculously, a path opened before me and I stepped onto it. I left the midwest and spent a semester outdoors in the Rocky Mountains as I was turning 19, and it changed my EVERYTHING. I had been sleepwalking through a confused wasteland of a life after adolescence, and the mountains fished me out of that swamp and lit the pilot light of my soul again. Nothing could compare to the astonishing beauty of the Colorado wilderness for a midwestern girl raised on cornfields. The sleeper in me began to awaken and I began to heal. 

At the end of my 19th year, I moved to Sedona, Arizona. The first time I drove down Oak Creek Canyon into the red rocks, I cried. Like a child.

Beauty moves me.

I took a retail job at an Artisan's Gallery. One slow afternoon, light-headed after blowing the dust off the books in an artist's booth (you can't make this stuff up), I decided to become a jeweler. Through a series of synchronicities, within a week's time I was apprenticed to a skilled antique repair jeweler who had learned at a trade school in Buffalo, NY. He was a master, and shared the jewelry craft with me. I developed an affinity for design. My life growing up had not been the life of an artist, those opportunities were not offered to me, but the conflict and turmoil, that is the cliche fodder of an artist, had been abundant. So it was an effortless transition, from Angst to Art, and the medicine that began to flow through, transformed the destructive into the creative. Wear your Medicine. Create your Medicine. Trust in the beauty of this Earth.

However, traditional jewelry craft required that I be tied to an extensive & expensive workshop, so I balanced this by traveling on the weekends to set up and sell my jewelry at art shows. I spent years creating and selling jewelry and then took a long, winding break and learned many other hand-crafts and healing arts.

Over the past 25 years, I've wandered the earth, acquiring Experience and Wonder, and grown in my understanding of the medicinal power of nature. I research, empirically and intuitively, the biochemistry of minerals and metals, and weave their energetic and physical properties into my pieces. My mixed metal gemstone jewelry is a synthesis of ancient symbology and modern aesthetic. I work with brass, bronze, copper, silver and semi-precious gems. I cultivate a unique and relevant style of hand built, impactful adornments that speak strongly to the Wearer and can be crafted almost anywhere. I regularly take my hand tools and supplies to jaw dropping natural places and combine these two guiding passions. The symmetrical perfection of nature is my muse and mentor, and I find there is a coalescence that occurs in my design when I'm close to the earth :: a collaboration of matter and spirit :: the dynamic process of listening and responding :: of translating ethereal inspiration into material reality.

My intention is that my wearable art is as medicinal for the receiver as it is for the creator.

At this time in our world, I see no greater service, than to BE the antidote and sow beauty with abandon.