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Award-winning jeweler Adam Neeley combines his talents in goldsmithing and gemology with masterful designs to create wearable pieces of art.
By Sharon Stello
On the heels of his first solo exhibit, which wrapped up over the summer at Laguna Art Museum, jeweler Adam Neeley has launched a nonprofit to encourage the next generation of jewelry makers while continuing to craft his own stunning pieces and push the limits with his materials and techniques.
Neeley himself got started in the field at a young age in Colorado. “My dad was a rockhound and we’d go rock collecting,” Neeley says. “And I’ll tell you, when you dig for seven hours in the ground and you finally find a crystal, it is absolutely thrilling. You’re the first person in the whole world to see it and hold the treasure. And that was something that just captivated me as a kid.”
From there, Neeley became interested in stonecutting and started working with local rock shops. Artists in the area took him under their wings and taught him the ins and the outs of the trade. From there, he learned silversmithing and took part in his first jewelry show at age 14 in Telluride, Colorado, selling out in just two hours. “And immediately, my parents said, ‘Well, Adam, this might turn into a business if you want it to,’ ” Neeley recalls.
His recent exhibit, called “Modern Alchemy”—the museum’s first decorative arts showcase and a 25-year retrospective of his work—shared some of that personal history because he wanted to “inspire the next generations to fall in love as rockhounds or beginning lapidary artists.” Among more than 100 pieces on display were his early creations including a pair of earrings he made for his mom as a 12-year-old. “And it was an interesting progression because you can see I started out a little more Southwestern, coming from Manitou Springs, Colorado. And then by age 14, I started to move a little bit more modern,” he says.
Polishing a Gem
Refining his raw talents, Neeley attended the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad, California, then traveled to Florence, Italy, and studied at contemporary jewelry school Le Arti Orafe, apprenticing under master goldsmith Giò Carbone, who took him to the next level, guiding him to experiment with custom alloys and ancient techniques like niello.
Neeley went on to learn platinum smithing and computer-aided design in New York, but was drawn back to Southern California’s warm weather and scenic coastline, opening his first atelier in north Laguna Beach in 2006—across the street from his current studio and shop—in this “wonderful, charming artist colony in one of the most beautiful places you could imagine,” Neeley says. “And it also has the appreciation of patrons that collect here and come here for it.”
Only 23 years old, he opened the shop with about a dozen pieces over Fourth of July weekend and sold all of them that same month. That momentum has continued for the past 18 years, gaining loyal collectors along the way including at Festival of Arts, where he exhibited for more than a decade. He has also won dozens of awards and even has a piece, his lustrous pearl-filled South Sea Glow pendant, in the Smithsonian Institution’s collection.
Among his innovative achievements, Neeley created SpectraGold, a gradient alloy that transitions from rich yellow gold to white gold. He has also invented a cool green VeraGold, red RevaGold and peachy Champagne-toned AlbaGold. These metals required hundreds of hours of experimentation to perfect the colors and ensure they are flexible enough to work with and hard enough once a piece is finished. And each piece takes more than 80 hours of work, hand-fusing and forging, to produce.
Neeley is inspired by nature, whether it’s flowers, seashells or color palettes like the purple blossoms and green leaves of a jacaranda tree. “Nature’s one of my favorite muses,” Neeley says. “[I] take a look at something that’s really beautiful in nature, like a flower, and … kind of distill down those elements, like the curves and movement into something that’s a modern, abstract interpretation.”
He also enjoys borrowing color combinations from artists like Vincent van Gogh and elements from different time periods, whether it’s a touch of midcentury or modernizing a look from the Victorian era. When it comes to men’s jewelry, from rings to cuff links and lapel pins, Neeley trades curves for angular forms, often turning to the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright for inspiration.
Neeley says he was drawn to making jewelry because there are so many facets to the art form, including different techniques and also the challenge of mastering each aspect. “And I think that constant search for perfection and craftsmanship, that constant search for balance and design and originality and then the next stone,” he says. “Today, … we purchase a lot of our stones at the Tucson Gem Show and I go and I’m like a kid in a candy store—the world’s most expensive candy store. And I just love it. It’s my passion. And I was very lucky to find my passion early in life.”
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
He offers both a fine jewelry collection, where he re-creates a few of his most popular pieces for people to buy, as well as high jewelry, which he often enters in competitions. Designs sometimes come to him in dreams. The key to capturing that idea, he says, is waking up during the dream and sketching the design before it fades from memory. Take, for example, his Nautilus earrings: Reminiscent of a shell shape, they are made of SpectraGold and outlined in different colored pearls for an ombre effect.
Neeley’s Tonna Galea earrings also came to him while sleeping. “There’s a particular shell in Greece called the Tonna galea … and I actually brought one home with me and cut it open,” he says. “And inside, you get this wonderful spiraling of the shell, which is so cool. And so I had gone to bed with the shell right next to me—kind of planting the seed.”
And the dream did come, leading to the earrings made of SpectraGold and mimicking the curves of the shell, accented along the edges with glittering diamonds. In Neeley’s further research, he made a fun discovery: If you plot this shell’s shape on X and Y axes, it’s the same as the harmonic series if mapped out as sound waves. So this idea of the parallel between music that you hear and jewelry worn on the ear added another layer of intrigue to the design. Neeley started to release the brand-new Tonna Galea earrings and other Greek-inspired pieces in the Cyclades Collection over the past few weeks and will continue rolling them out through the end of September.
He also plans to introduce a new titanium collection next year, possibly in spring. Embracing aerospace technology, Neeley uses the computer to create designs that are produced by a 3D printer with a kind of metal typically reserved for space shuttles and satellite parts. He was drawn to titanium because it’s strong and lightweight—meaning large, dramatic earrings are more comfortable to wear—and it can be made in vibrant hues. In this way, he continues to push boundaries.
Giving Back
Neeley also seeks to encourage today’s youth. In late May, he founded an educational nonprofit called Gorgeous Little Things to instill in children an appreciation for gemstones and minerals—Earth’s geologic marvels—and the art of contemporary jewelry.
“Going into the art world is a little less known than becoming a lawyer or a dentist,” Neeley says. “And so I’m seeing, generationally, our industry is shrinking a lot—the jewelry industry itself [and] the art industry. … And so I want to inspire those next generations to take that leap if they feel this is something that could be their life’s passion.”
The nonprofit is, in part, a nod to his mother’s career as a teacher. For his recent exhibit, Neeley worked with Laguna Art Museum to create educational programming that will eventually be incorporated in curricula for grades K-12 that teachers can download from the nonprofit’s website, gorgeouslittlethings.org, to use in schools across the country.
And, leading up to Neeley’s exhibit, the nonprofit paid for the creation of special display cases that were donated to the museum to use in future exhibits. Also in collaboration with the museum, the nonprofit sponsored an outing, Art Access: Dig for Gems with Adam Neeley, which took a group of children and adults to the Oceanview Mine in San Diego County in June. Neeley anticipates offering other events and outings in coming months.
“In addition, the nonprofit will begin to amass a collection of gems and jewelry that will be available for museums and other educational institutions to be exhibited or showcased and then eventually donated,” Neeley says. “… We’re hoping that legacy continues beyond us.”
Adam Neeley Fine Art Jewelry
352 N. Coast Highway
949-715-0953; adamneeley.com
