We began working together in 1978.
Turza Wells and Andrew Shows, began working together in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was a silversmith from Illinois with a Bachelor's degree in art education, and he was a painter and sculptor from Maryland with a Bachelor's in drawing and painting and a Master's in sculpture and ceramics. They combined their expertise and created a unique style of inlay jewelry, which uses nontraditional epoxy and incorporates Andrew's sculpture skills for hand-carving the images. The materials he uses range from semi-precious stones, shells, natural stones, even stabilized and sometimes man made, allowing him a wide and varied pallet. The carving is long and tedious process and must be handled with care and caution. Turza does the metal fabrication after they jointly decide on a design. Then the images are arranged so that they tell a story. Each piece goes through 17 steps until it is ready for its final polish, which creates a lustrous, smooth and tactile surface.
As their work developed over the years, they owned a gallery; sold to museums, including the St. Louis Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian; worked in the fashion industry with a feature in ELLE Magazine; and sold and displayed their work world-wide including Harrods of London. Now their jewelry is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Indian Art and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico, though they are among the few non-Indians selected.
