Mani Designs

• 7 River Arts Place
• Asheville, NC 28801
• Phone: (510) 332-1649
• Region: River Arts District

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I’m a California girl living in western North Carolina. I learned to use my hands as a metalsmith/jeweler in craft school in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Learning a craft gave me a wholeness in a new way and offered a path to follow. Karl Blossfeldt’s black and white photographs of plants and seedpods inspire me. The intelligence of shapes is endlessly fascinating and seems to point to the plant’s consciousness. Years ago, my favorite poet told me that I must learn the names of the flowers, rivers and trees in my surroundings if I was ever to write good poetry. Those words sank in and indirectly led me to this work of studying and casting plants. I think there is poetry in my work, it comes from continued observation and the premise that beauty has meaning.