Meet Sara Thompson

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sara Thompson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sara, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

As a young child when I was out of school from snow days, school vacation, or sick, I would go to work with my mom at the family’s machine shop. My mother’s parents met on the plane coming to America in 1959. Six months later, they were married and soon had four kids while working multiple jobs and learning English. They were trying to obtain the American Dream. My grandfather couldn’t read or write English but started the machine shop and the whole family pitched in. It wasn’t an option not to go work for the family business after my mother and her brothers graduated from high school. As the business grew and other family matters, my mom ended up as VP. It wasn’t her dream job, but it helped us live comfortably and be the breadwinner of our family. She instilled in me and my brother from an early age that it was more important for us to do what we love and not be unhappy at a job making a lot of money. She wanted us to pursue our interests with the freedom she wasn’t afforded.

When I was there in the machine shop as a little kid, I would be in the conference room coloring and drawing with whatever highlighters, sharpies, and pens I could “borrow” from people’s offices. I would end up bored and wandering around and seeing all the different machines and equipment. Sometimes I would make drawings for people’s offices or I would sweep the shop floors for five dollars. Often, I would end up in my grandmother’s area, She would be humming in Polish and I would watch her engrave part numbers, package parts, and follow her around. She would show me how to package parts in groups and wrap them in a blue paper and seal them. I would then stand on a stool and work side by side with her. Other times, I’d follow her up to an attic area and look through the master catalogs and boxes for part numbers and master parts. It seem like everything was in my grandmother’s handwriting. She would take the time to show me how to reference the part numbers and find what we were looking for.

From these moments with my mother and grandmother, I learned from the selfless sacrifices they made. I learned from how they made the best of what they had. I learned from their kindness, patience, compassion, and their temperament that hard work will pay off.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’m an award winning silversmith with a BFA in Craft with a concentration in metals from the Oregon College of Art and Craft. I work bilaterally between wearable forms and minimal utilitarian objects. I apprenticed under a bench jeweler from the ages of 11 to 16 on Martha’s Vineyard. I then graduated high school at 16 and then moved to Portland, OR to start my degree and as the first person in my family to pursue higher education. During my studies, I focused on traditional silversmithing and thrived in the mentor-based learning environment at OCAC. After completing my BFA at 20 in 2017, I’ve spent the last few years exhibiting annually at prestigious fine craft shows around the country, like the Smithsonian Craft + Design Show and Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, and have won several awards along the way. In my work, I use traditional silversmithing to explore the vessel and the intimate connection of handheld functional objects. I’m drawn to the simplicity in the process of taking a flat, two dimensional sheet of silver and hammering it into a three dimensional object. The resulting vessel is a form we encounter everyday, an object that both occupies space and contains it. Through employing this familiar form, I use the vessel to serve as a point of convergence between minimal design, historical craft, and ordinary handheld objects. My work honors historical silversmithing while creating silver objects with a fresh, minimal, and contemporary aesthetic. Sharing my work in-person at craft shows has been crucial to my practice as it helps me share my process, receive critical feedback, and encourages viewers to physically engage with my pieces.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I have a deeply held core belief in doing the best you can with what you have. At the end of the day, people usually don’t remember what you said to them–they remember how you made them feel. I approach my work and my business with thoughtfulness and intention. There are times where I redo a piece two, three, or even five times because something goes wrong or isn’t right. I would prefer to have that piece out in the world, rather than having a client come back in a few months with a broken piece. When a piece does come back damaged, I reframe it as a learning process to see how I can improve on it. I care about the longevity of my work and what happens after it sells.

When a client walks away with a piece, the piece starts a new life. That person may wear it everyday or look at it in their home. They may tell there friends about the piece, the artist, where and/or when they bought it and this creates a conversation. This demonstrates how powerful the word of mouth is. I don’t think you need thousands of Instagram followers. Instead, strive towards developing a small group of people who believe in you and your work. Put your best self and work out there and you’ll be recognized for it. You don’t have to do everything and appeal to everyone. Do something and do it well.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

I recently read “Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions” by Temple Grandin. The book resonated with my own personal struggles and how I’ve adjusted to navigating the world. I discovered early on that I found it easier to learn things and process information through color, patterns, and hands-on learning. If I’m unable to visualize something, I have a hard time grasping the concept. I still struggle with spelling, writing, and translating thoughts into words. I knew I wasn’t stupid–I just think visually and some verbal things take me a little longer to process. Ways that I adjusted to navigating our world that’s dominated by verbal communications (think emails, social media, writing papers, people who can talk fast and on their feet) is taking more time to do these tasks, asking for a second set of eyes to proof read something, and delegating when I can.

I reflect on the people in my life that struggled with words, like my grandfather, but thrived with hands-on work. Where as with my grandmother and mother who excelled with words and verbal communications and documentation, they contributed to success in a different way. I think about all the students and young adults who struggled in school, weren’t good test takers, and ultimately who didn’t have opportunities to work with their hands, use tools, or have access to the arts. I reflect on how fortunate I’ve been to have exposure to the arts, trades, and an apprenticeship. Higher education helped me think more critically about my work and further develop the technical ability to make art work and build a vocabulary to talk about it.

My token of wisdom to anyone is to listen to your intuition, discover what you’re good at, and follow it. Some thing might come easily to you and that very thing may be difficult and time consuming for another person. Ask for help and delegate so you can spend your time doing the very thing you thrive at.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sara-thompson-metalsmith.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sara_metalsmith

Image Credits

Images 1-4 (studio) taken by Courtney Hellen
Images 5 and 8 taken by Stephen Funk
Images 6 and & taken by me