By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Marissa Saneholtz was first attracted to metalsmithing at 14 as a student at Bowling Green High School.
She was bored with her academic classes, she said. But art, especially metals, taught in Becky Laabs’ classes offered a challenge that involved both art and science as well as fire.
Saneholtz is an award-winning metalsmith and jeweler who uses her specialty of enameling to tell the stories of independent women often with a sardonic edge.
[RELATED: Marissa Saneholtz makes her mark as a woman artist to watch]
In July she spoke to the Kiwanis Club about her journey in art that took her far afield before settling back in his native Bowling Green. She is a member of the faculty in the BGSU School of Art.
Despite some initial hesitation, when it came time to attend college she decided to attend BGSU so she could study with master metalsmith and jeweler Tom Muir.
She also walked on as a member of the gymnastics team. While “some competition happened,” she said, “I was better at getting hurt than actually competing.”
After a couple shoulder surgeries she served as an avid cheerleader and moved mats for her teammates to do their flips on.
The first rings she created reflected her love of gymnastics. Other early rings displayed her sense of humor. One has a Monopoly dog lifting its leg to relieve itself. Another has a magnifying glass frying a bug.
After graduating in 2008, she decided she wanted to move away from her hometown. She attended Eastern Carolina University drawn by a strong jewelry and metalsmithing faculty.
Saneholtz found the inspiration for her artistic direction close to home. While helping her mother, Karen Saneholtz, clean out the attic in her maternal grandmother’s home, Sneholtz came across her mother’s stash of old romance comic books. “How did these form what my mom taught me,” Saneholtz wondered, “because I’m very influenced by my mom.”
This led to a series of earrings and other works centered on sardonic commentaries on domestic life and gender roles. Later, this extended to works depicting the tattooed ladies of the circus.
These women, Saneholtz explained, found independence by running away and joining the circus. They needed no particular deformity nor talent, just a lot of tattoos.
In her second year at Eastern Carolina, she traveled to Tuscany in Italy to help found the school’s Italy intensive program.
She spent two years in the 800-year-old hilltop community of Certaldo Alto. Helping to build the studio including a 300-year-old anvil.
After two years in Italy Saneholtz sent noted jeweler Jim Cotter a handmade calendar with the date she planned to start working at his Vail, Colorado studio.
On that date she was there. Cotter is a high end, yet cutting edge, jeweler, who set a $100,000 diamond in a ring made of cement.
At this point Saneholtz already knew she wanted to teach, but she felt that experience in Cotter’s studio would give her experience outside academia that would be worth passing onto her students.
It also gave her the chance to work with precious materials such as gold and diamonds that she couldn’t afford to use in her own art.
After two years, she returned to the classroom, taking a one-year appointment at Appalachian State College. When an opportunity in metals at BGSU opened up. She was hired.
(The position had been held by fellow BGHS and 2008 BGSU graduate Andrew Kuebeck.)
As a teacher Saneholtz helps students find their niche in the diverse discipline.
She has found her place.
Saneholtz specializes in enameling that involves working with glass that contracts and expands at the same rate as metal, harking back to the science that first attracted her to the field.
She and her family have settled into Bowling Green, having bought a home next door to her parents, Dave and Karen Saneholtz.
