A Journey in Jewelry

August 31, 2006

Alyson Sena ,

As the door to Judith Ubick's house swings open, a modest sculpture of the Hindu elephant god, Ganesh, greets visitors. Hanging in the entryway, Ganesh is more than a protector and destroyer of obstacles. He is the doorman to Judith's own personal folk art museum'right here in Pacific Palisades.

Handmade crafts and works of art, from glass flowers to traditional shoes from around the world, fill her house, which was designed with built-in shelving and niches to display her collections.

'If there are two of them, I collect them,' says Judith, 65, who has traveled from China to Greece and Africa to Mexico. But the treasures are more than souvenirs from her trips or decorations for the home. They serve as inspiration for Judith in her own artistic pursuits: painting and jewelry design.

Sitting in her living room, gazing up at the mosaic of masks mounted on a bright melon-colored wall, she says, 'Every time I see what somebody else does, I think, 'Wouldn't it be fun to do that kind of a line in some other material?' Nothing is new in painting or jewelry. You work off other people's brilliance. You hear a line of music and then you take it and make it go another way. That's how we evolve.'

Judith began working with jewelry 36 years ago, when she was pregnant with her son, Daniel. A schoolteacher for many years, she wanted to be able to stay home and raise her children but had to earn money to supplement her husband's income. So, she took on projects like restringing pearls, which she knew would help pay the bills.

Self-taught, Judith says, 'I used to sneak peeks at the Japanese knotters to see how they did it. A lot of it I learned by taking things apart, seeing how [a piece of jewelry] was done and then putting it back together. Finding out what materials to use was the toughest part of all, and then how to finish a piece so that it stays nice, how to do the knots and double knots.

'I don't feel like there should be secrets,' Judith says about the guild-like industry of jewelry making. 'Everybody worth their salt who's going to make it will come up with their own look, and if teaching them how to tie a knot properly is a threat, I just don't see it. Artistry is something else. You can't teach that. That will happen in their own development.'

A founder of the Los Angeles Bead Society, Judith started dealing in African beads when she was a student at UCLA, where she earned her master's degree in African studies. 'Traders at that time, in the 1970s, were coming in and selling their beads. I started fiddling with them and wearing them, and they would sell off my neck at UCLA.'

Around the time Nixon opened China for trade, Judith began working with antique Chinese beads, designing jewelry for an overseas trading company. She ended up traveling to China to help the company pick out things she thought would appeal to 'modern women in America.'

'The old treasures of the world are harder and harder to find, and disappearing,' says Judith, who hunts for unusual materials on her travels and incorporates them into her jewelry designs. 'One ancient piece that I'll find, it will eventually tell me what should be done with it. They all do.'

Judith has turned Mongolian hair ornaments into bracelets and Tibetan prayer boxes into pendants for necklaces. She combined handmade sterling silver sea creatures from Sri Lanka and Thailand with seraphinite, a blue-green stone she compares to seaweed, 'with the iridescence of water.'

Her materials are organized by color or type of bead'jade, turquoise, pearls, ivory and bone'in wide rectangular linen drawers in her dining room. She has painted the knob of each drawer to look like the beads inside, another playful, personal touch to her home.

Judith's designs range from colorful, chunky and asymmetrical to delicate and subtle-toned. Her work is for sale at the del Mano Gallery in Brentwood and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The del Mano Gallery, known for jewelry, wood, fiber and teapots for collectors, will hold its annual show for Judith's work on December 2.

'The del Mano pieces are rare, made with finer quality materials and more intricate designs,' Judith says. 'I want each one to find the home of the person who should have it. And they all do. Some of them, after two years, I'll take home and realize that person's not seen it yet, and then take it back and, sure enough, that person will come in and get it.'

Jill Woodmansee, manager of the del Mano Gallery, says that many people come in looking for pieces by Judith. One example was a Palisades resident who came in a couple of weeks ago. 'She wanted something bright that wasn't heavy,' Woodmansee says. 'She found this beautiful strung necklace of Sleeping Beauty turquoise [a bright blue turquoise].'

Judith's goal in designing these one-of-a-kind pieces is 'to see the hands of the world again being enjoyed by taking those old pieces'that would otherwise, perhaps, sit in the drawer forever or be thrown away or melted down'and using them again, so somebody in another society and era can feel the spirit of those hands.'

When Judith was in Rajasthan, Northern India, four years ago, she bought a cut emerald from a collector of antique Mogul jewelry and envisioned wearing it in a diamond and gold necklace on her wedding day. Judith, who has been widowed twice, married retired judge Andy Weisz in 2002.

Instead of a wedding dress, Judith wore a traditional Indian shirt-and-trousers outfit'a 'salwar kameez,' hand-embroidered with gold thread'which she had custom-made in India to go with the emerald.

Weisz, 81, shares Judith's love of travel and happily accepts her wall-to-wall collections, saying, 'she's even found the ceilings.' The couple honeymooned in St. Petersburg and just returned from a cruise around the Black Sea in May.

Judith creates a journal for each of her trips and fills it with her own watercolor paintings and notes on the places, people and customs. She keeps a record of restaurants and phone numbers, as well as other pictures and mementos from her adventures.

'Most people take photographs, and I do that, too, but I remember sitting and drawing this and looking at it,,' Judith says, flipping through her journal on the Danube River and stopping at her sketches and watercolors of Bulgarian architecture.

She and Weisz are planning a trip to southern India in February, and Judith is looking forward to seeing the lightweight gold jewelry in Kerala on the tropical Malabar Coast.

'India's hard on the body and hard on the mind because the stimulation is so intense,' she says. 'It's like eating dessert all day long.'

Judith, who has lived in the Palisades since 1968'first on Friends Street and now above the Alphabet Streets'always enjoys returning home to see her five children, three of whom live in the area, and five grandchildren.

Judith Ubick's work is on display at the del Mano Gallery, 11981 San Vicente Blvd. Contact: 476-8508 or visit www.delmano.com.