San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
ARTIST’S WORLD OF COLOR
With her Brwngrlz brand, a jewelrymaker finds her niche and reclaims her Filipino identity
Before the pandemic, spring in San Francisco meant the start of the craftfair season. Some weekends, DIY connoisseurs would flock to the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture to buy the work of local artisans, like earring maker Gretchen Carvajal. There was always a wide variety of jewelry and crafts for sale, but, according to Carvajal, there was never a wide diversity of people. “Every time I do an event, I’m like the only vendor of color.”
Born in the Philippines and raised in the Central Valley, Carvajal is the founder of Brwngrlz (www.brwngrlz.com), which makes handmade jewelry especially for women of color. Its pieces, priced at $20 to $40, are bold and meant to be noticed. Lasercarved from translucent acrylic in brilliant hues, the earrings invite sunlight to trickle through and cast colorful shadows onto the canvas of the wearer’s skin. The shapes and etchings of the designs are inspired by Carvajal’s childhood.
Carvajal based her last collection, Reclamation, on the imagery embroidered on her family’s thick swap meet blankets. As a child, she considered the blankets a gaudy emblem of her difference from others; the collection expresses her intention to reclaim them, along with other parts of her upbringing she once pushed away. Each piece is named for a female relative who modified her name to assimilate — or was forced or pressured to: Arsenia, Felisa, Paramulan, Vicenta, Zenaida.
“It was a hobby at first, then it became a hustle, and then it became a brand,” Carvajal says of her company. She attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison on a scholarship for spoken word and hiphop artists. An English major, she intended to work on poetry, but in free moments Carvajal found herself settling into the paint studio in her arts residence hall, blasting music and hardening lace appliques into earrings. Once Carvajal discovered the lasercutting lab on campus, she would sneak in at 3 a.m. to carve the pieces she spent the day designing and assemble them back in her room.
Carvajal came up in the Bay Area poetry scene, and because words have always been her medium of choice, her love of the lasercutting lab and of using her hands to make art came as a surprise. She enrolled in formal art classes and soon began to learn the technical underpinnings of an entirely different craft from scratch. Carvajal pursued a studio art degree with a focus on printmaking and neon and graduated in 2017.
“Being in the hiphop scene and being in the Bay Area, I have a pretty deep knowledge of self that resonates throughout my art,” Carvajal says. Making art, whether poetry or jewelry, has been a way to process her personal history.
But her jewelry company has aims beyond exploring identity, Carvajal says. In Brwngrlz, Carvajal says she is drawing a blueprint for inclusive branding. “If I can’t see it,” she says, of brands representing people of color, “I’m just going to make it.” Black and brown photographers define the art direction of each collection. Marketing shoots feature only black and brown models. Carvajal says she collaborates only with brands founded by black and brown women.
Although Brwngrlz sales went on hiatus in the spring due to pandemicrelated disruptions, Carvajal plans a relaunch on May 31. She says Brwngrlz provides her main source of income and has helped pay her family’s bills, her parents’ mortgage and even her relatives’ school fees in the Philippines. She places collective good at the center of the enterprise.
“Yes, I started this thing where it was enough that there were pictures of black and brown girls wearing my earrings, but now I’m raising money for indigenous people to get free or for moms in Oakland to get housing.”
Last year on Indigenous People’s Day, Carvajal launched the Cordillera Collection, a capsule collaboration with FilipinoOakland brand Bayani Art. The design of all the earrings — some in her classic acrylic and others in wood — were inspired by the textile patterns of the Igorot, a tribe indigenous to the Philippines. The jewelry maker says she worked with Igorot educators to carve pieces that aimed to preserve — but not romanticize — indigenous history. Proceeds from the collection supported the education of indigenous youth through the Igorot Global Organization Scholarship Fund.
Carvajal still designs, laser cuts, assembles and packages all her pieces herself in Wisconsin. This summer, she was supposed to have interns, but it looks like she will continue her onewoman operation for the foreseeable future. Amid the pandemic, she has been searching for ways to use the brand to build community. To encourage customers to send gifts to one another while in isolation, Carvajal plans to release care packages with three pairs of earrings and DIY earring kits that will include precut pieces from past collections and fixings for customers to make their own Brwngrlz earrings. For every pair of earrings, kit and package sold, Carvajal says, she will donate a portion of the sales to Sabokahan, an organization that sponsors and supports indigenous Lumad women in the Philippines in their fight for basic social services.
One of Carvajal’s mentors, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, likes to say, “I do not have time to make art for art’s sake.” As news emerges of COVID19’s disproportionate effects on people of color, the idea seems more salient to her than ever. “It is so urgent for me to always be about women of color, especially in a time where a lot of us are still not being heard or are being killed or are not safe.”