Studio PMC - Rio Grande

Robin Whittemore
You might expect pieces of jewelry created
in the shadow of the artist's struggle
with serious illness to be somber or at
least muted. But Robin Whittemore’s jewelry
asks the wearer to come out to play.
“I have real zest for life, so that little bit
of whimsy in there just goes with my attitude,”
she said in an interview several
months prior to her death. “I don't know
exactly how that happens. I like to think the
message just comes right from my spirit.”
Robin's work includes both whimsical
pieces featuring children’s toys and playful
figures, and equally lively bracelets featuring
messages like “Believe” “Hope” and
“Second Chances.”
Robin began making cancer awareness
bracelets in 2000, after overcoming breast
cancer. She frequently purchased beads
through a catalog company that sold
metal clay, and was intrigued enough that
when the opportunity came to take a
class, she seized it.
“Once I started with PMC I just fell in
love with it,” she said. “I’ve never worked
with sheet metal or silversmithing. I think
that would be fun to do, but since I’ve started
with PMC, I just can’t see how anything
would be better.”
She continued creating jewelry even
after she developed myelodysplastic syndrome,
a bone marrow disease likely
caused by the chemotherapy that had
saved her life six years earlier. She began
an exhausting series of treatments and an
unsuccessful search for a bone marrow
donor. The illness often took all her
resources, physical, emotional, and financial,
but whenever she was able, she
returned to her workbench.
“I’m just a creative soul,” she said. “I
think I always have been, and it means a
lot to me to be working on something that
I enjoy. My work just fills me with hope
and the desire to keep going, and I just try
to be an inspiration to others through my
work in some way.”
While Robin was sustained by her faith in
God, she consciously avoided creating pieces
that were overtly religious, focusing instead
on universal messages of hope. “I have great
faith, but I feel like we all have our own
beliefs and faith, and that anyone should be
able to relate to my work,” she said. “I’ve
always prayed that others would be able to
see Jesus in me, and that my faith would
shine through my life without me having to
scream it out. That’s how I work, as well.”
She loved creating pieces that reminded
the wearer that second chances were possible,
and that hope could be found even in
the midst of trouble. “I think we’ve all
wished we had a second chance somewhere
along the way, whether with a
friend, a husband, a health situation, a parent,
or even just making a piece of jewelry
that you wish you had a chance to make
over,” she said. “I think people who are
going through difficulties of some kind can
really relate to my work.”
Her illness also taught her to appreciate
things that last, and working with PMC
helped satisfy her need to create something
that would outlive her. “Silver is
something that can last forever,” she said.
“I like to sign my pieces, too, so that someday
someone can look at it and say ‘That
was my grandmother’ or ‘That was my
friend’ who did that. I get great pleasure
out of this, both doing it and knowing that
there will be something of me left behind.”
Robin died on July 9, but she left behind
many friends in the metal clay community
and many wearers of her work, to whom
her spirit of hope and her love of life continue
to speak.
8 · Studio PMC