About the Artist(s)

At Moonstruck Silver, we make artisan jewelry by hand from original designs, including hand-carving waxes to make original cast pieces. We make grabby hands at fossils and shiny rocks. We make questionable decisions sometimes, like letting the cat in the studio when we KNOW all he wants to do is knock the potted plant off the desk. We believe handmade is better, that there is joy in art, that joy is necessary and vital, and that hotdogs are sandwiches.

About the Artist: 

Maggie Gonzalez is a trained writer with a nearly-complete degree in creative writing, so working in insurance and then in the greater field of Shiny Things were the obvious next steps. As a child she was given a box of assorted rocks by family friend and lapidary Old Weird Harold, who patiently sat on the shag carpet and explained what every rock was, heightening an already pronounced tendency to hoard small shiny things. As an adolescent she made jewelry intermittently as a hobby, was terrible at it, and once threw a bracelet loom out a window in frustration. 

As a self-trained jeweler she stubbornly failed upward at beading, wire-wrapping, and wire weaving before discovering that she was much more at home with saws and torches and inadvisable chemicals than she ever was with beads. Now, she specializes in hand-sawed piercing work and carving tiny details into wax.  

Her work evokes rapidly fading dreams, natural curiosities, and half remembered picture books from childhood. Her subject matter is diverse, covering everything from cryptids, birds of ill omen, Southern Gothic motifs, to literary icons.

Kathy Matthews is a mother of two, one of whom is, as of the time of this writing, writing an artist biography for her.  The other one is probably sitting on his back porch with his dog, but that’s neither here nor there.  She resides in a liminal space between her home and Maggie’s studio, and likely feels a strange combination of pride and regret at having re-introduced her daughter to the greater field of jewelry making.  She hoards beads and was once accused of sleeping on them in a big pile, but she has since brought the hoard to live with Maggie.  After a brief interrogation regarding whether there had been any recent unpleasant diagnoses, the beads have settled in with Maggie nicely. 

She specializes in extremely tiny wire work details, correcting Maggie’s worst mistakes, and hand-stamping in copper and silver. 

Her hobbies include slipping Brody and Zelda french fries under the table, hurling money into the endless void of the jewelry supply house, and sweeping the floor but not remembering to find and utilize a dustpan.  

If you need to reach Kathy, you can e-mail her at haha that’s a joke she doesn’t read her email lol

Shop Dogs:

Brody “Broderick” French Fries Gonzalez is a studio assistant and extremely large Great Pyrenees.  As a puppy someone told him he was once the royal dog of France, and he has never forgotten this.  His hobbies include being chewed on by Zelda and having far too many dew claws. 

Damnit Zelda Gonzalez is a Pyrenees/German Shepherd mix who possesses the energy and intelligence of a German Shepherd, and the size and stubbornness of a Great Pyrenees, so that’s flippin’ fantastic.  She has never met a stranger, and moonlights as a canine intercontinental ballistic missile.