HIDDEN GEMS

JEWELRY DESIGNER PIA PODGORETSKY ON RESILIENCE, CREATION + CONNECTION

Video + Images Captured by Olga Nazarova 

 

 

 SHOP NEW ARRIVALS

 

Your work is so magical. What inspires you to create?

I am obsessed with light, magic, and what strikes the heart in a rebellious kapow! I come from a background of designers, painters, musicians, and tailors, so whether my family and I wanted it or not, design was perhaps ingrained in my DNA. I wouldn’t have believed it was true, but I’ve seen my children gravitating toward creative expression even without it being pushed upon them.Personally, I've always had this deep desire to share my story of resilience and extend this cloak of grit to others. And it just so happens that I've been into gemstones since I was four years old, my father taught me energy work as a toddler, and I fell in love with Ancient Egyptology when I was seven. The symbology and ability to conceal information for only the intended never left me. I also grew up with skateboarders and punk music which really instilled a will in me to never give up. We each have a story, and these are the positives that have never left me at each crucial point in life. Coupled with my design background, creating objects of resilience is really an extension of everything I have come to be and feel like I can teach. But to teach, you often have to hope that someone comes to resonate with what you're saying to reap the benefits of what you have to provide—as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. So I see myself as creating a series of powerful yet subtle visual cues that set the will of others in motion, allowing them to connect with their supernature and reminding them of all the incredible things they can do.

 

 

 SHOP NEW ARRIVALS

 

Your family is beautiful. How has your family informed your work and your process? 

Thank you! My children’s relentless refusal to give up and always attempt the unknown without fear has in turn taught their dad and I to nip fear in the bud quickly, face everything, and rise. Children learn through nurture, love and practice, and the idea of perfection does not exist to them. Simply, they do it a good few to a few hundred times, and they get insanely articulate and skilled and that’s been such a powerful mind trip to remind ourselves of—you can do anything you put your mind to, whether that is overcoming a personal fear of bugs and holding a tarantula, or deciding to move four thousand miles across an ocean, dive into business as a mother, and quit corporate job security in NYC to move to the middle of Northern New Mexico. It’s like, WOW, if they can do that without fear and succeed, I've got this—X, Y, and Z—without fear too. 

 

 

 SHOP NEW ARRIVALS

 

What inspires you in the natural world? How do you speak to the connection of nature in your art?

I'm inspired by lightning, and this projection of a lightning bolt that strikes right down through another's being out through their palms and cloaks them in an all-knowing resilience; mountains that simply rise; large bodies of water, such as surreally serene still alpine lakes with a mirror reflection and barely a ripple in sight; the sound of glacier runoff, and intuitive acts of protection that creatures present in the wild. I find all of these things to be humbling and sublime. I believe nature and intuition are all a part of a deep stream of consciousness connecting all living beings to a universal language. I feel objects and tapping into this intuitive consciousness to inform your design for others keeps you tapped into this idea of a greater picture, that there's something bigger than you are at play here. Nature, for one, is always Queen. 

 

 

SHOP NEW ARRIVALS

SHOP NEW ARRIVALS

 

 

 SHOP NEW ARRIVALS