Artist creates ‘living lockets’ customized for customers
Codi Grubbs Smith can certainly travel light when she sets up her vendor’s table as she did for the Avinger Wine Festival recently.
The articles she shows at her table are lockets, and they are small in size if big in their meaning. Her largesize locket is about as big as a quarter. Then, there is the middle size. It’s about a nickel. The small size? A dime.
“But you are the designer of these lockets,” Smith said. “You choose the locket meaningful to you and the charms that go on the inside. They become something you give to someone that will mean a lot to them.”
She calls her jewelry “living lockets” because they can be customized to suit your interests.
Let’s say you are a grandmother and want to give a locket to your granddaughter to go around her neck. You choose a plain or a sparkly locket and fill the inside with the granddaughter’s birthstone, cheerleader’s image, initials or any other charm that tells a story. Very personal.
Nothing’s big here. Everything’s small but filled with meaning. That’s the ticket.
Codi’s interest in jewelry comes from an online concept called Origami Owl custom jewelry founded in Arizona. Her title is independent designer. The company’s mission says it is to be a “force for good.”
Codi has followed a variety of interests in her own life as well, since graduating from Linden-Kildare schools in 2001. She earned an undergraduate degree at Louisiana Tech and then a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Texas at Tyler.
She taught at schools such in Texarkana, before teaching er, grades one to six in the Avinger schools.
But there’s more to her work here with the district being small.
“I have several hats, and one is that I do the school’s payroll,” she said.
“I’ve done a lot of things up until now, but I think what I really want is to be something like a city administrator,” the jewelry designer said.
If she wishes to put a charm in her locket representing all she has been interested in, Codi will probably have to go for a locket that’s the size of a 50-cent piece.