In 2025, I learned something important about my work. When I force a design, it doesn’t have the same impact as the designs that come from the depths of my being.
I sit down at the bench with an idea I want to execute, a timeline I want to meet, or a result I think I should produce. Those pieces usually turn out fine. They’re well made and often have beautiful stones over which people will swoon, but they rarely carry the kind of resonance that inspires awe or invites someone into a deeper relationship with the work.
More importantly, they don’t feel aligned with what I feel is my responsibility to be a conscientious steward of the gifts I’ve been given.
What I learned last year is this: when I force the work, it doesn’t do as well. And it shouldn’t. Because the pieces that matter most are not the ones I decide to make. They are the ones I listen for.
That realization sharpened as I read Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act, a book that didn’t teach me something new so much as give language to what I’ve been experiencing in real time. He writes about the artist not as the source, but as the vessel.
Creativity doesn’t originate with us; it moves through us when we’re quiet enough to notice. For the last seven years, I have made a regular practice of asking for the ears to hear and the eyes to see, and my entire life has changed profoundly. I have begun to understand in a very clear way what it means to be used in service to others; it has been proven over and over again in my life this year.
Rick Rubin suggests that the creative act is less about self-expression and more about receptivity; about removing the ego so the work can reveal itself as it wants to be made. Reading this helped me understand why the pieces that arrive through listening feel so different from the ones I try to control. One feels authored. The other feels entrusted.
Creation as Listening
One of the most meaningful examples came through a custom ring made for my friend, Yvo.. She had found a Royston turquoise stone herself in Santa Fe, and it carried weight long before it ever reached my bench. The piece was meant to honor a friend she lost in 2025 and to serve as a reminder to stay rooted in the values her abuelito instilled in her. His name is inscribed on the inside of the cuff. She left me a message that brought me to tears, sharing that the ring just meant so much and was a kind of “reclamation of self”. If I can offer that to someone who has been through the ringer, I am experiencing something great. Nothing about that piece was invented. It was revealed. My job was simply to listen closely enough to let the stone, the story, and the intention guide the work.
Rick Rubin writes about moments like this as evidence that the artist is not the final authority over the work. During this process, it became extremely clear to me that the piece had not been made for me; it was made for her. My role was to get quiet enough to recognize that and step out of the way.
If you are interested in your own custom work, you can read about that here.
Trust Placed in the Maker
Another moment that stays with me deeply is a cuff I made for a man who trusted me to create a piece that would resonate with his daughter. Her mother loved and had a special affinity for poppy flowers, so the cuff featured a poppy. Rosarita stones were set into the design, chosen for their reminder that beauty often emerges through endurance and challenge.
We spent a lot of time discussing the cuff and he entrusted me completely to put together something special. When he finally received it, he was stunned. He couldn’t believe how awesome it was (I was really proud of this one too). As I made it, I really felt like I was moving love through the metal for this young woman. She is about to go off to college, she is such a sweet girl, and she loves her parents dearly. I can’t explain it, but I knew that I was being moved to make this as a special guardian piece for her. He sent me a video of his daughter opening the gift on Christmas morning. As she cried and thanked him, my heart cracked wide open. That moment wasn’t about the cuff anymore. It was about trust, memory, and love moving through an object and completing its journey.
That is the work finishing itself.
You can see some of these custom pieces here.
Meaning Revealed Over Time
One of my favorite reminders that the work continues after it leaves me came from a piece I call the Trust Fish. It was part of a collection titled Force, using the word as a noun rather than a verb. The collection emerged during a period when I was learning, again and again, to lean into trust rather than control.
At the time, I was intentionally practicing surrender. I got quiet one day and asked what I could make that might reflect the power I felt guiding me; a force greater than myself that was steady, protective, and trustworthy. As I sat with that feeling, I became aware of how much easier life felt when I stopped resisting its movement and allowed it to unfold.
The image of a fish came to me. Fish live within the current. They allow themselves to be carried, yet they also know when to swim upstream. Their movement is responsive rather than reactive; guided by the same force whether they are yielding or pushing forward.
Weeks after someone purchased the Trust Fish, they wrote to tell me that every time they wear it, they’re reminded to trust the flow of their life and allow themselves to be carried, even through rocky waters. That meaning wasn’t something I explained. It was something the piece revealed to them over time.
In The Creative Act, Rubin describes art as something that continues its work long after it leaves the artist’s hands, revealing new meaning as it meets the life of the person receiving it. He talks about art as something that keeps unfolding long after it’s made. This was that, exactly.
The Work Knows Who It’s For
The Ride the Wind pendant might be the clearest example I have of the work knowing exactly where it needs to go.
Three of these were gifted this past Christmas. Each recipient found their own meaning in it and subsequently shared their sentiments with me. One spoke about their lifelong love of horses and the grounding reminder the piece offered. Another shared that it reminded them to move into the next season of life with courage and trust.
And then there was the mother who had lost her son in a car accident, and whose own father also passed away in 2025. She told me she would never take the pendant off and that she felt, deeply, that her loved ones were with her. During our conversation it became extremely clear to me that the piece needed to come into the world not for me, but for others who would benefit from the message it carries. This is one of the central ideas in Rubin’s work; that when a piece is aligned, it reveals its destination on its own. The artist does not decide where it belongs. The work tells you.
This was the most profound reminder of something I already know to be true: I am not the source. I am the conduit. This is how I believe Creative Intelligence works through me to reach people, offering comfort, connection, and meaning in tangible form.
Choosing to Listen
Not every piece arrives this way. And I still catch myself trying to force outcomes from time to time. But now I recognize the difference.
Listening requires patience. It requires humility. It requires letting go of the need to control how the work will be received. But when I do that, something far greater than my own effort comes through. Rubin describes this as a lifelong practice rather than a perfected state. Listening is not something you master; it is something you return to, again and again.
That is the work I want to keep making.
If you’re curious to explore the pieces that have emerged from this way of working, you can browse the collections here.
If you feel drawn to co-create something meaningful together, I invite you to learn more about my custom jewelry process.
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Creativity is a relationship.
I’m learning to listen.