Flights Of Fancy: Berkshire Botanical Garden Presents Jewelry Artist Mindy Lam
Her reverence for nature, a deeply spiritual soul and a lived experience of illness and healing all go into the work of jewelry artist Mindy Lam. You don’t necessarily have to know all that about her, of course, but you’ll sense it when you peer at the intricate worlds that exist in each of her highly adorned pieces. Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge, Mass. has them on exhibit in “Flights of Fancy: The Botanical and Bejeweled Universe of Mindy Lam” running through June 6 in the Center House Leonhardt Galleries.
And perusing the exhibit is like talking a walk through a magical fairyland. Her pieces, more like sculptures than brooches, earrings and accessories, are combinations of 14k gold, copper or stainless-steel wire wrapped around jeweled and vintage flowers, bugs and animals. Sprinkled around those are sparkly Swarovski crystals and semi-precious stones. Each one presents a universe of its own. Lam is careful to include at least one item of vintage jewelry in with every one of her creations. “Vintage and new ensures that the piece is timeless,” she says.
The Leonhardt Galleries have been transformed into three distinctive gallery rooms. The first features Lam’s Homme Couture Collection, a favorite among men who wear these works of art as lapel pieces. They are exhibited museum wall-style and in glass showcases. Each is a one-of-a-kind art piece conveying its own natural world filled with creatures and floral elements — fish, flamingos, birds, all the things you find in nature and your garden, Lam says. A smaller room is gasp-worthy: two trees — clearly one representing spring, one for winter — bloom with nearly 500 Mindy Lam Classic original brooches and earrings sparkling in the sunlight. Off to the side is a board filled with pieces from her Cherry Blossom Collection, the butterflies looking like they’re just about to take flight.
From the Cherry Blossom Collection
Finally, there is the Wedding Room, with the centerpiece being Lam’s signature metal lace gown originating from a single, delicate thread of wire. Perhaps the grandest, most opulent piece is a winter crown, set in a bell jar in front of a window. Silver wire, rhinestones dangling like melting snow, and winter birds accented by green semi-precious stones evoke what Lam wanted others to see: that the Berkshires are as beautiful in the winter as in the rest of the year.
All items are for sale or available to purchase as a special order.
A Magical Connection
A Maryland resident, Lam visited the Berkshires in a bleak season, but how she found her way to the BBG is a bit of serendipity. Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo, a BBG board member and granddaughter of the Leonhardts — whose foundation the building is named for — uncharacteristically opened an unrecognized email from Mindy Lam’s company, subject line: SALE. Immediately taken with Lam’s work, she bought three pieces, and couldn’t get the collection out of her head. An idea for a show at the Garden formed, which she pitched to the marketing committee. The idea developed into a full exhibition.
Lam visited BBG to get a feel for the garden and atmosphere. Cautioned that she was coming at a quiet time at the garden (and possibly snow), Lam laughed it off. Having grown up on a chicken farm in Hong Kong, she'd been a child fascinated with creatures found in nature. She knew she’d be able to see and sense the life of the garden even during a fallow season. When she walked through, she saw children on site and learned about BBG’s education program. Inspired, she has generously extended sales on her website to support the Garden’s horticulture and education programs.
More Homme Couture Brooches
Gratitude and Giving Back
Indeed, philanthrophy is a large part of Lam’s operations, an outcome of her own experience with serious illness and resulting losses. In the early 2000s, she was a successful designer with a million-dollar business; her couture line was retailing at Henri Bendel and featured in the prominent fashion magazines. In 2010, she was struck with end-stage kidney disease. Unable to work, she was forced to shut down her business and sell her home. After three difficult years of home dialysis, she received a kidney from her daughter, and after fully recovering, officially relaunched the business in 2016.
Since then, she has worked with numerous charities, such as the National Kidney Foundation and American Heart Association, and has recently created the My Passion Forward Project, the official charitable arm of her business. A collection of everyday pieces, prices start at $38 and allow the purchaser to choose from the designated charities to receive 20% from the sale.
“Couture is important, but charity is my mission,” Lam says.
Illness also changed the way Lam approaches creativity.
“I see the world in more detail now. I meditate before starting to work each day to get into the proper frame of mind. I can’t create when I’m sad. In the past I would keep working even if I was tired and upset. Now I stop and appreciate the time. I think I was put through the pain so I could evolve as an artist.”
Board member Leonhardt Cassullo has gotten to know Lam well and has seen her work evolve as the Mindy Lam collections continue to be recognized as more than jewelry. She says that Lam had been meditating that someone would see her work not just as a trunk show type of event but as art worthy of a museum exhibit. “And then I called!” she says. Later this month, the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke will present Lam in a solo exhibition of pieces inspired by paintings from the museum’s collection. Proceeds from those sales will further the Museum’s afterschool programs. Because that’s what Lam does (see: mission, above).
“With Mindy, everything comes from a place of love,” Leonhardt Cassullo says.
You can feel that, too.
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