- What do you get when you combine a talent for painting with a love of rock collecting?

For Caitlin Albritton, these passions have led to a career in jewelry making.

Let's visit the artist at her home studio in Tampa.

- I'm Caitlin Albritton and I'm a lapidary jeweler.

(groovy music) Lapidary is the art of cutting stones and I cut the stones to fit very specific channels into my jewelry.

And that technique is called inlay.

(groovy music continues) So the Skyway Exhibition is this amazing exhibition where the curators select local artists from the whole Tampa Bay area.

- Caitlin's work is an exit fit in the Skyway Exhibition, as it is the only jewelry-based practice represented in the exhibition here at the Ringling Museum.

So her work really helps redefine what is considered fine art and what can be included in a formal exhibition at a museum such as the Ringling.

(upbeat music) - So I've always been doing art ever since I was little.

What I do now, I'd like to say I kind of merge my passions of both rockhounding and painting.

Growing up in Florida, I'm a Florida native and there's always this culture of pirate lore and treasure.

So I've always been really interested in hunting treasure, not just, you know, gold, but also treasures of the Earth.

(gentle music) Then I'll go to the painting side of it.

Always been painting since I was little.

It wasn't until I was in high school that I started to make more meaningful paintings.

At that time, I really suffered from a bad eating disorder.

I had a lot of the problems of, you know, me versus me at that time.

So I was making kind of more figurative-based works at that time.

And even into college, I was always making kind of works about the figure and the body 'cause I was kind of trying to wrap my head around the issues that I was going through at that time.

Eating disorder problems never really go away, but I like to say that my figurative jewelry are kinda like tiny talismans of inner strength for me.

I really like this quote that I'm gonna read real quick.

It's by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu.

It's, "Water is fluid, soft and yielding, but water will wear away a rock which is rigid and cannot yield.

As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.

This is another paradox.

What is soft is strong."

I thought of that strength as the internal voice that I have.

Am I going to use the hammer voice today speaking to myself, or am I gonna use like the soft flowing river when I speak to myself?

So that's where I wanted to come from in terms of like trying to portray inner strength because that is really hard to do.

So that's how I kind of combine my passions of rockhounding and the painting.

- She produces wearable paintings.

That's how I would describe her jewelry.

Her pieces remind me of some of the paintings by various artists from across art history, like some of the impressionists or fauvists, artists working in Art Nouveau such as Henri Matisse or Gustav Klimt.

So she really also uses old outline, vibrant colors to portray motion, movement and emotions of her figures.

(upbeat music) - I did go to school for arts.

I went to Savannah College of Art and Design.

That's where I got my undergrad degree in painting.

And then after that I went to Maryland Institute College of Art, where I got a studio art degree also in painting.

During our travels out west, I came across a lot of Native American jewelry.

So that really, you know, inspired me 'cause it really is painting with different stones cut up into different pieces to make the mosaic.

Arts Council Hillsborough County does grants for professional development for artists and I applied to take some classes at William Holland School of Lapidary Arts in Young Harris, Georgia.

So I went up there for three weeks.

I learned how to do inlay and intarsia, which are two different ways of making mosaics out of stone.

And after that I put my paintbrushes down and I haven't touched them since because this is my life passion.

Like, I really knew immediately that like this is what I was meant to do for the rest of my life.

Some of the stones I use in my jewelry are actually things that I've personally found in mine, but a lot of times I source some from friends that are miners.

So I get my materials from all over the world, basically.

- She uses such a wide variety of different stones from Jaspers, to agates, obsidians, jades, but also turquoise and coral.

So her pallets of stones is quite wide ranging.

- So everything usually starts with a drawing.

And then from there I make like a little template that I use to bend my wires.

So once I have that all pulled together, I'll solder all the joints together.

So I have like pretty much like a little framework.

Then I can start picking my color palette.

And that's usually the time that takes me the longest 'cause I like to look through my stones and feel like what's the feeling of this piece that I wanna kind of get across.

So then after I have all the stones cut, I can epoxy it in place and then a little extra cleanup and then it's all done (laughing).

- [Ola] So what I really admire about Caitlin Albritton is not only is she a very skilled and fantastic artist, but her willingness to share that knowledge with other people.

- Think about making some of those things you could have never dreamed of making before, like those Native American style cups you've been drooling over for years now.

I'm here to help you demystify these difficult-looking techniques and I share everything I do with you with the goal that you can easily do this on your own without any hangups.

With lapidary arts, there's a lot of confinements.

Like, you can't make your own color palette.

You know, you have to work with what mother nature gives you.

But I think there's a lot of freedom in having this confinement.

You know, like we're gonna choose for dinner.

Having too many choices is kind of problematic.

It like makes it really hard.

So working within these limitations of what these kind of art forms have is really liberating and really exciting for me.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] To see more of Caitlin's jewelry, go to c-albritton.com.