Catherine Galloway
Jeweler, Shop Owner
I was born and raised in Pacifica, California, a small coastal town five miles south of San Francisco. I first discovered jewelry making while attending Lick-Wilmerding High School, a private school in San Francisco which was a merger between a college prep school and an industrial arts school. Along with all of the usual academic curriculum students were required to take shop courses, including wood shop, metal shop, welding, electric shop, machine shop and drafting. Jewelry was offered as an elective to juniors and seniors, and as soon as I started taking that class I was hooked, although I never dreamed at the time that I would make a career out of it.
After a brief stint in academia at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, I returned to the Bay Area to attend classes at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Finding the training there insufficiently technical, I dropped out and started taking classes at the Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts. Life ensued- I had a child. At the age of 21 I got my first job as a jeweler, working for Alan Revere, and for the next thirteen years worked for various art jewelers around the Bay Area, including Janet Alix and Kent Raible.
After a couple of years making my own work on the side and beginning to market it I made the jump in November of 1997 to doing my own work full time.
After doing the rounds of wholesale and retail shows around the country for five years, and picking up enough galleries to represent my work, I settled down into my studio to concentrate on making jewelry again. I also taught goldsmithing and stone-setting for six years at the Revere Academy.
I love to make jewelry. I am fascinated by the techniques, the concentration involved, that other world I am transported to when I work at the bench. It is a constant joy and challenge to me. I love to assign myself a challenging task and then to fulfill it in a creative and beautiful way. Traditional techniques intrigue and inspire me. I try to let the design of the jewelry grow logically out of procedures involved in the making of it, not to hide the technique but to make it an important part of the attraction of the piece. I feel very lucky to have found something I love to do so much, that I am really good at, that I can support myself doing.
