This episode features Gerry Florida, an accomplished jewelry artist, whose belief in human imagination and resilience fuels her work with at-risk youth, including those incarcerated in a juvenile detention center. Florida has served as the director of several community art programs, as a board member of several community and educational organizations, and a founding member of Studio Blue. As she explains, “I thrive on minimal direction, spontaneity, and mistakes. Free-form wirework in jewelry-making demands impromptu solutions in order to harmonize each next move with the last. My work is a ‘live happening’ of endless bloopers, masterfully redirected with each movement of untamed wire that is never backtracked, never undone and never given a second chance to correct itself. My continual artistic challenge is to integrate failures and make them beautiful in the finished piece.” Bringing this artistic sensibility to her relationships with juvenile offenders, she does not dwell on their past mistakes, but encourages them to integrate what they have learned into new and better possibilities for their futures.
Additional information about Gerry Florida’s work as an artist and advocate for at-risk youth can be found on her website, https://floridarecycled.com