After overcoming his despair when he realized he could technically never grow up to be a firetruck, Alex Boyd, surrounded by a family of artisans, was encouraged to create. A working artist, teacher and jewelry-repair aficionado—the bills still have to be paid—Alex has developed textured, yet linear aesthetics at his bench and avoids as much polishing as possible. Never one to take himself seriously, but driven by the lines, forms, colors and stones in his designs, Alex joins Courtney to discuss jewelry business drivers and the makings of a master, while sharing many laughs along the way.
After overcoming his despair when he realized he could technically never grow up to be a firetruck, Alex Boyd, surrounded by a family of artisans, was encouraged to create. A working artist, teacher and jewelry-repair aficionado—the bills still have to be paid—Alex has developed textured, yet linear aesthetics at his bench and avoids as much polishing as possible. Never one to take himself seriously, but driven by the lines, forms, colors and stones in his designs, Alex joins Courtney to discuss jewelry business drivers and the makings of a master, while sharing many laughs along the way.
Courtney Gray:
All right guys. This is Courtney Gray. I'm here with Mr. Alex Boyd, alexboydstudio.com. Is that right, Alex?
Alex Boyd:
That is correct.
Courtney Gray:
Yay. Pull up his work if you guys are around a computer and check it out while we're talking. Really beautiful stuff. I'm glad to get to connect with you today on for the love of jewelers. How are you up there in Colorado?
Alex Boyd:
Considering what so many people are going through right now, I'm doing great. I kind of hate to say I'm doing great when there's so much suffering going on, but I've got a great studio to work in, I've got a great girlfriend, I just got a puppy. I don't know anyone personally who's really gotten super sick. So I'm one of the lucky ones, for sure.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. I think it is good to say we're doing great. It's allowed for sure. Alex, I want to talk to you about your work and the progress you've made over the years. Start off by just seeing if you could share with me and the community here a little bit about your family. Guys, I don't normally do this, read from somebody's posts, but Alex has been cracking me up. Everything he posts is hilarious and just very imaginative and I really want to get into how your brain's working, where are you coming up with these stories. But I love this one. I'm going to read it before we talk about your family a little bit and your mentors.
Courtney Gray:
Alex Boyd was born into a family of artistic genius. His mother was a mine who never broke character. She taught Alex all about invisible box construction, walking into imaginary windstorms and how to climb unseen ropes. And then it goes on and it's hilarious. You guys need to go and check this out. Alex's father was an infamous poet whose dirty limericks are still banned in many states. His uncle is a renowned tinkerer whose facility with baubles and trinkets has no equal. His aunt is a well-regarded Hip Hop dancer known for inventing twerking. I know none of this is true.
Alex Boyd:
Well, my uncle is a renowned tinkerer.
Courtney Gray:
Well, that part's true. Michael, yes. And I know Michael Boyd is actually I have to say one of my favorite designers and jewelers.
Alex Boyd:
Mine too.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah, I bet. I bet. So is that, would you maybe tell us about some of your biggest influencers and mentors?
Alex Boyd:
I would say my biggest influence is definitely going to be my mom. She's just one of those people who can really take on any medium and do it well. She's got a degree in fine art printmaking but can really... She's a good jeweler. She's a great textile artist. She's an amazing gardener and she's just, really anything she puts her mind to she can do. She just kind of was always putting things in my hands to work with growing up. So I never had that kind of upbringing where when you tell your parents you want to be an artist, they're like, "Don't you want to get a real job?" Or any of that. It was always just almost expected that I would be some sort of creator.
Courtney Gray:
That's awesome. And you worked in glass first?
Alex Boyd:
Yeah, glass was my first medium. I had a friend of mine who he was actually a pipe maker and I got to go see him work with glass and make pipes and I was like, "That is amazing. I don't really want to be in that world. I want to do something that I can show to my grandma." But I was so amazed by seeing that molten glass flow and the things he could do with it. I learned that actually for a lot less equipment and investment, I could start making glass beads and I thought, well, that's what I'll do, because then I don't have to feel like I'm kind of... I don't have any problem with what he did, but it's just not me. I'm more of a goody-goody I guess.
Alex Boyd:
I wanted to just be able to show off my work everywhere. I started making glass beads and almost, I would say, my second glass bead I was like, this is all I want to do all the time. I would spend probably eight hours a day in my studio on top of having to have a job as a barista or construction work or any of the other tons of random jobs that I've had. And so I was probably working like 80 hour weeks just totally obsessed with it. But I found after a couple years of really investing my time and money and energy into it, that I was hitting a price ceiling hard.
Alex Boyd:
I was making these glass beads that might take me four or five hours of continuous focused work to make and people didn't want to pay much more than like 60, 70 bucks for them. That just it was bankrupting me basically to do that. And so I thought, well, maybe I can start putting these glass beads into pieces of jewelry and connect some metal parts with them, make them bracelets, make them necklaces and be able to sell them at a price that will pay me at least to make it, I'll at least cover materials.
Alex Boyd:
I'm amazingly fortunate to have an uncle who is a genius metalsmith and lapidary and he lives about hour and a half South of me or so. I asked if he could show me how to do some metalworking. I drove down to Pueblo and he put a jeweler saw on my hands, gave me a little strip of silver and some half round pliers and said, here is how you make a ring and how you solder it shut and hammer it round on a mandrill. I'd made like five rings, sliced my fingers like three or four times in a couple hours.
Courtney Gray:
Rite of passage.
Alex Boyd:
Absolutely. Still is. He gave me a few basic metalworking tools. He gave me a jeweler saw, gave me maybe a file or two, and kind of sent me on my way. He recommended the book The Complete Metalsmith by Tim McCreight. So I ordered up a copy of that and I just kind of in my basement put together a real rough metalsmithing studio and started making little end caps for my glass beads and running wire through the beads and making little loops that connected so I could make a bracelet or a necklace, and reading and trying everything I could from Tim McCreight's book. After probably six months of that, I realized I'm barely touching glass at all anymore. I'm almost purely working with metal and it's kind of been an obsession ever since.
Courtney Gray:
Nice. Yeah, that sounds like... I was going to ask you that question actually, Alex, is do you remember the moment you made the choice to do jewelry full-time, and that kind of answers it for us. So did you fall in love like you did with the glass? Did you have that same like loss of time slash I love this and I just can't walk away from it.
Alex Boyd:
Yeah, I have that when you all of a sudden you're working and you feel really ill and you look up and you realize you haven't eaten anything in like 10 hours and you kind of pass out.
Courtney Gray:
Not with a torch on.
Alex Boyd:
Not with a torch on.
Courtney Gray:
I have a colleague who literally fell asleep with a torch. He was up soldering so late. I mean, thank God he's okay.
Alex Boyd:
That is dangerous.
Courtney Gray:
Yes. Set up a ping on your phone guys or something to remind you to get up from the bench and stretch, move around to get the blood flowing, and yes, eat some protein, right? Oh my goodness. So how long ago was that when you really made the choice to say this is going to be my career path?
Alex Boyd:
I would say it was 14, 15 years ago.
Courtney Gray:
Okay. Yeah. So we can call you, you are a master. We can put you in the master. Over a decade. Well, I don't know. I don't really know how we can count that yet.
Alex Boyd:
That is a word that you'll never hear come out of my mouth, I mean, to describe myself at least. I feel like it's only for other people to say, but I'm definitely enthusiastic.
Courtney Gray:
I love that. We'll put you in the enthusiastic category.
Alex Boyd:
I've made my living off of it for the last probably 12 years or so. But it took a while to get to where I made more money than I spent on it and a longer time after that to get to where I could actually pay my bills with it and I didn't have to have a bunch of other jobs.
Courtney Gray:
What would you say was the most influential job that you did have as you were starting to work and learn and grow. Was there a job that stood out to you before jewelry?
Alex Boyd:
Before jewelry, I was a handyman for a home builder and I got to take part of so many different processes involved in renovating and building homes. So I would do tile and paint and put windows in. Really almost everything except plumbing and electric. Did a little framing, did even some roofing. I knew that I loved building things, that I went to bed at night feeling really satisfied with my day, like I had accomplished something. That's key for me. If I do work that doesn't have a tangible product at the end of it, even if I work my butt off, I don't feel like I've accomplished anything. And so knowing that I've created something that it didn't exist before, I need it for my mental health.
Courtney Gray:
For sure. Yeah, I get that. I get that. I worked in a lot of different crafts before metal glass ceramics, and the one thing that I really realized about metal was the permanence and the longevity of the material. I mean, this is material that can be buried in the dirt for centuries and we can still access it. It doesn't break when it hits the ground. You can run over it with your car, et cetera. But yeah, I totally get that. I think that's probably why you've become such a strong jeweler when you say it's the engineering that's involved in that handiwork, totally relates.
Alex Boyd:
I think the biggest thing that taught me how to be a jeweler was I got a job at a jewelry shop in downtown Denver called Gusterman Silversmiths. Doing repairs, it was like jewelry grad school where I had a decent skillset before I got that job, but I was just making my own work and I wasn't solving other people's problems. And once I got exposed to all this different jewelry and really had to think about how to repair it without destroying it, it gave me a skillset that I then took on to my own work and it really expanded what I'm capable of.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. Oh yeah, I bet. I mean, trying to repair, especially when sometimes you can't even identify the metal or if it's been soldered before. We've all been there those of us who've done repair or even made our own work sometimes trying to fix a problem. I think we learn so much by that.
Alex Boyd:
Absolutely.
Courtney Gray:
Those troubleshooting moments. And honestly, I think that's what makes a great instructor as well. When I worked with a lot of different teachers, I would always look at, one, the student work, and two, are they making, are they active, is this jeweler able to navigate and troubleshoot with the students? I would say working in repair, I bet that feeds your instructor abilities, your ability to kind of... Because, man, students will bring up some strange moments where it's, "Oh, I've never faced that one before. How are we going to figure it out together?"
Alex Boyd:
And I'll often swoop in and save the day. When they think they've wrecked something, I can come in and do some of the... The skills that I wouldn't have as a pure studio jeweler, they really come in handy to get that student back on track so they can keep on moving with the class and they don't feel kind of demoralized by messing something up.
Courtney Gray:
Or defeated, like ready to throw it across the room and quit. Yeah, that's a huge skill that I think we build from just simply making repetitively over the years. When did you start teaching Alex?
Alex Boyd:
Initially I got my first teaching experience with being a teacher's assistant for my uncle. And I would say that was maybe 10 years ago or so. And that was amazing because it's basically like taking his class for free or getting paid to take his class. I didn't get quite as much time on the machines as the students did, but I got to hear everything he was saying. I did it, I probably have been his teacher's assistant a half a dozen times or more. That's the initial teaching experience and that really helped me to get a grasp of how to structure a class and how to communicate effectively with students.
Alex Boyd:
And then I would say maybe five years ago or four years ago, I started working with the Boulder Metalsmithing Association. That was huge because she kind of took a chance on a teacher who's... Compared to most teachers, I was a lot younger than the teacher she was hiring probably by as much as maybe 20 years. I got to learn how to communicate with my students, how to structure these classes on my own terms rather than going with what my uncle was doing; because while my uncle he's brilliant, we have very different ways of thinking.
Alex Boyd:
So being able to teach there really was huge to getting the confidence. I remember the first time I taught there, I was so nervous. I had like a stomach ache driving up to Boulder and my hands were clammy and I was probably mumbling and stuttering half the time. I just kept going back and teaching more. And now, I mean, I liked getting nervous and overcoming it and now I don't get nervous at all when I'm teaching. It's just like, oh, this is my job. It's what I do.
Courtney Gray:
That's awesome. Yeah, it sounds like the first time I got on stage. We were playing music in the garage for like a year with my husband, my husband and I have a band together. We had three other guys and they were like, "So, when are we going to play out on a stage?" And I was like, "We're not doing that. I'm safe here in the garage." And the more you do something, I think the easier more natural it becomes. I do still feel butterflies every time I get on stage or every time I teach or do an interview like this, Alex, honestly anything. And I think that those tingles that we feel are more what I try to consider as preparation. It's like without that we may not go in prepared. So it's like useful butterflies, I don't know. What do you love to teach the most now that you're, and how long... Yeah, you've been teaching for a while now assisting. What's your favorite thing to share with others?
Alex Boyd:
I guess my most popular class is a class I teach called gold on a budget. Over the years, I started making jewelry basically right when gold became insanely expensive, or maybe I started using gold right when it became insanely expensive, I was making some things in copper and silver before then, but I've never known affordable gold. So I developed some techniques to use really small amounts of gold and stretch it a long, long way. I started, I developed a class to share those techniques and that's a really fun one because people get really excited when they've been scared of gold and all of a sudden feel like this thing that was intimidating to them is approachable and it really can open up a lot of doors for their work.
Alex Boyd:
It also, it helps jewelers sell work. You put gold in a piece and it's a lot easier to make a living as a jeweler. You work in pure silver or base metals, even if that work is some of the most amazingly technically difficult and beautifully designed work, a lot of your average customers don't have the appreciation for that that they do of precious materials. And I mean, that's a little sad because I think that the real source of value in the world I want to see should be human labor rather than the preciousness of a resource. But it is also the world we live in and I want to be able to pay my bills.
Alex Boyd:
So putting the little gold here, putting a little diamond there, if that means I get to do what I love for a living, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. It's also beautiful, 22 carat. Especially I do a lot of work combining 22 carat with oxidized silver and I just love that black and yellow combo.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. It's so much more pronounced with the black and silver, the darker versus light. It's gorgeous. I love the textures that you use too. You do a lot of the gold and then I was looking at your work and every piece of it, some of your work is textured every little spot. Just can we talk about texture for a minute?
Alex Boyd:
Absolutely, yeah. A big part of why I texture so much is post-traumatic stress from being a polisher. When I first got hired at Gusterman Silversmiths, for, God, it might've even been a year, my job was to sauce sprues off of castings, file that sprue down and then polish that piece up using Tripoli and Rouge. I did so much of that that now the idea of polishing, just like my hands get clammy. I get all nervous not again. I just was like, well, what can I do to not polish? I'll texture. Then if I polish, it's just removing texture, it's just going to hurt the piece. So that's kind of where my love of texture began. And then over time I've really refined the textures that I use and kind of made that almost a fingerprint of my work that has a specific style of texture.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah, it really stands out in your work for sure. So it's almost like from necessity you create the recipe. It's all the polishing. I think that's the most common comment that comes up with jewelry makers is, what's your least favorite part, and it's like polishing, polishing, polishing. But we've got to do it. And I actually honestly used to really love polishing, like in the beginning just seeing that everything was shiny. I was just like, "Let's make it all shiny because look how shiny we can get it." But then as time goes on and the Rouge stains your fingers, you know it's time to get creative. I mean, I really love the texture in your work because it looks like something kind of dug up from the earth and kind of ancient. Is that an important or a prominent design approach for you?
Alex Boyd:
Absolutely. When I was a little kid, I was obsessed with ancient civilizations, real ones and fake ones like Atlantis. I could not get enough of that stuff. One of the kind of ways I describe my aesthetic is that it comes from an ancient advanced civilization that has disappeared, but somehow they were capable of doing things that we can't explain today. Like the Pyramids and Stonehenge and all of these things that are just, they kind of defy our conceptions of what the ancients were capable of. And I think that's a real big aesthetic inspiration for me.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. I can tell. It also creates a really cohesive feel to your work, like I know when I'm looking at an Alex Boyd piece, which I think is important for makers to once they kind of get into their craft and really want to build a career, I feel that cohesive look and align is important. Do you do mostly one of a kinds or are you doing a line of jewelry or one-offs that you just put out there for sale, Alex?
Alex Boyd:
I do I would say it's almost all one of a kind, but if I make a piece that someone sees and loves, I'm happy to make something similar to that piece again. But I don't do production work. I don't build multiple pieces at a time. I always do one piece at a time and I always, even if I am making something similar to something I made before, I like to change some aspect of it. I want to feel a sense of growth with every project. And I mean, that's ideal. I also live in the real world where sometimes somebody wants something that is exactly like the thing they bought from me last time because they want to give it to their sister or a family member to have the shared piece. I totally do that. I'm not that big of a diva.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. You say yes. Well, especially that's special that you're creating this heirloom quality to the work and it's got that importance to the people that are receiving it, which I think is why we do custom in general, is that one-on-one relationship. For me anyway, I think that's true. I'm looking at your gallery on my other screen, Alex, and oh my gosh, guys, you have to go to alexboydstudio.com and check out the gallery. There's so much work here. Do you have a favorite piece that you've created? Like the process, like everything just flowed and the outcome was really powerful.
Alex Boyd:
Yeah. I've got this, it's a sleeping beauty turquoise bracelet that I made with pure all natural unstabilized sleeping beauty and 22 karat, 18 karat Sterling silver and diamonds. That piece, it took like a year to come together. I cut the stones and then I decided what to do next and really never knew how it was going to end. The whole time I was just like, well, what's the next step? What's the one thing I can do to it now that won't screw it up, and I would do that. And then I'd let it sit for a while and come back to it when I had another idea. I love that piece. It's got this really cool box clasp that is two pieces of sleeping beauty that fit real well together with a little diamond in the center that's the button for the box clasp.
Courtney Gray:
Nice. Yeah. Did it sell, this piece, or you still have it or?
Alex Boyd:
It did sell, yeah. I actually, I made it to enter it into the Saul Bell Awards. And then I was about to box it up and send it off to be photographed by a professional photographer because I just couldn't do it justice on my own. And like the day before I sent it, I got a message from Molly Bell asking if I wanted to be one of the judges for Saul Bell. There was a little, small, small part of me that was a little disappointed because I was like, "No, I have a piece. I've never had a piece ready for Saul Bell." Obviously I could not say no to that honor. That's like one of the most privileged positions I've ever been in was to be asked to be a part of that. It was amazing.
Courtney Gray:
How fun viewing all that work and just, oh my gosh, yeah, some spectacular pieces that, like you said, look impossible, like the pyramids. How did you make this? Yeah, I really love seeing the winning pieces and even the pieces that get entered is unbelievable stuff. Well, you can still. There's still a lot of other competitions out there, right? Probably more to come.
Alex Boyd:
A couple of months after that, it was honestly right around the time that COVID was obviously going to become a thing, that piece sold. That was really nice. It gave me a lot of big safety valve for not having shows that I could go to, not being able to teach. And also, a lot of people were scared about their finances so they weren't as willing to buy jewelry like they had been in the past. And the fact that that piece sold gave me a couple months mortgage payment so I didn't have to freak out.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. I'm hearing different responses from what's going on in buying habits and how that's working for jewelers, especially with the lack of shows. It could be that the future is quite different. I did want to talk to you a little bit about your thoughts on that. But first let's talk about, I'll go ahead. I got to read another Alexism, and I think you need to write a book because I think that's the next chapter. I'm going to encourage you to make a book of Alexism. I should come up with a better name, that's terrible branding.
Courtney Gray:
On social media and marketing, guys, Alex Boyd is inspired by the constant need for praise and validation. Taking inspiration from algorithms, he strives to create whatever gets the most heart responses. Alex seeks to discover the perfection of nature and get as many shares as possible. Someday, overcoming the crippling shame of being told by his father that he can't sing and he's too knock-kneed to be an Olympic runner. Man, you just crack me up. Like I said, I've been reading these to my family over the last couple of days and we've all just been laughing, which is so healing right now.
Alex Boyd:
I'm really glad.
Courtney Gray:
You sit down and these just spill out of your brain or is there...
Alex Boyd:
I definitely have dry spells where I've made some piece that I'm like, Oh my God, this piece of jewelry is amazing. I want to share it, but I don't have anything funny to say about it.
Courtney Gray:
Look, we said no pressure, right?
Alex Boyd:
But usually I can sit down and something will come to me. I don't know. I just, when I first started trying to really market my work, I would read about people who are kind of marketing gurus saying, "Your work needs to have a story." That's how you connect with people. I thought the real story of my work is like, I loved that color and I loved that line and texture and so I decided to make this thing. And honestly, while that's real interesting to me, that's a really boring story to share with other people. And I thought, well, maybe my story doesn't have to be true. And if it's really obviously not true, then it's funny. It's not like I'm lying to my clients, I'm just sharing some joy.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. I love it. I think it's much needed. And it does get so repetitive. It's I'm inspired by nature or I'm inspired by this line or this era of artwork or what have you. So these just have me cracking up. You guys need to check out Alex on Instagram too. What did you say, they follow you there and they get to have the Alexisms as well when you create new work.
Alex Boyd:
Honestly, Instagram is the number one place to find my work. I don't update my website as often as I should, so there's way more work on Instagram. And almost every piece has a story or a little funny thing to go with it.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. I love it. It's really hilarious. Would you say social media is really where you're finding new customers and creating an audience?
Alex Boyd:
Absolutely. Before I really got invested in social media, I hit a lot of roadblocks with the kind of art world gatekeepers. Even if you're really talented, not saying that I was at that time, but even if you are-
Courtney Gray:
Enthusiastic.
Alex Boyd:
... it's a lot about relationships and connecting with people and having people who you meet and like you, and then want to work with you. I didn't have a lot of people who met and liked me at that time that were gallery owners or things like that. And being able to kind of sidestep that and just get my work out there on my own allowed me to get the audience that you need to make a living as an artist. So that's been great. And now I've got a few galleries that I work with that are amazing, but I'm not sure if they ever would have known about me if I didn't find a way to get myself out there first.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. And do you do, are you posting daily or just as much as you can to kind of stay in front of your audience?
Alex Boyd:
I don't post daily. Sometimes I post daily. It really depends on how busy I am, how much work is getting produced. Some of my pieces might take a week or two to build. So during that time I might not post anything because I don't... A big part of it for me is I never wanted to feel like marketing. I don't really like being marketed to and I don't want people to feel like I'm marketing to them. I want people to feel honestly like I'm showing off, like I'm just being a little bit of a braggart towards this thing I made because I think that feels better to people than getting this like, here's this thing I have for sale, you should buy it. And there's enough of that in the world. You can't really go anywhere without seeing somebody trying to tell you to buy something.
Courtney Gray:
No, it's so true. It's so true. And now with the new ways of kind of hearing us without even knowing what... I mean, I can mention something I want to buy and all of a sudden I see all these ads for it and it's just so much. So it's nice to see somebody stepping outside of that box a little bit and creating more engagement and humor than sales. And marketing is creative. I really think it can be very fun. That word has such meaning to all of us. But if we shift our perspective a little bit about it, it can become more of an engagement tool, I think, in a community builder.
Alex Boyd:
For me, I think of marketing as more of a side effect of what I do rather than the goal. I really am, I've always been like, "Mom, look at me. Look at me, mom. Look, look," type of person. I've never been shy about showing off what I'm doing. And I think the biggest inspiration for posting on social media is really just to show off what I'm doing. And then the fact that sometimes I sell work from that is just an added bonus. I must not have gotten enough attention when I was growing up.
Courtney Gray:
I don't know if any of us did. That's too funny. Yeah, what are your thoughts now, I mean, without the potential of shows? We were really, I think, having to fill the gap with going online and online teaching. So you're juggling online classes now and creating. How many pieces on average are you doing for clients would you say?
Alex Boyd:
I would say I make probably maybe a dozen pieces a month and then I also... And some of that is not stuff you'll find on social media because it's work that is designed to satisfy a client's needs, not my own. And mostly what I post is the work that was built because I wanted to make it. I also do some trade work for other jewelers. I do a lot of fabrication and stone setting for other designers in Denver. A few different jewelry shops have me do their repairs. So I stay really busy.
Courtney Gray:
Sounds like it.
Alex Boyd:
And honestly I have to. I would love to say I could live the good life just on my art selling, but it would be... I'd be eating some thin gruel every day relying just on my art. And also I really enjoy doing repairs. I love the puzzle aspect of it. I love taking something that has a lot of emotional meaning to somebody and they're kind of distraught because it's broken or damaged and I take it in and I bring it back to life. I would say the most satisfied customers I have are the people who their grandma's ring broke and I did like 15 minutes worth of soldering and rounding it out and then I get it back to them and they're crying. They're freaking out, instead of wasting some easy job.
Courtney Gray:
Isn't that awesome? Yeah. That's so cool. You're the magician. I think part of being a jeweler is being somewhat of a magician. If it's not working, make it look like it's working kind of thing. Do you ever find yourself seasonally with a lull of creativity? I know as creatives, I started charting my seasons years ago like, okay, the end of the year, I'm very kind of unmotivated and uninspired. Do you have kind of a flow or seasons to your creativity?
Alex Boyd:
I wouldn't say I have a seasonality to it. I definitely have times where I'm incredibly inspired to get in there and make something that I imagined. And then I have other times where I don't really have that fire under me. But I really made a point of showing up and working either way. I feel like if I let the fact that I'm not inspired stop me from getting to my bench and making things, I'll stay uninspired longer and I'll kind of lose some of my self-esteem as well. I think maybe unhealthily I've got a lot of my self-worth tied up in being creative and productive. And so even if I'm not really excited about what I'm creating, the fact that I did it anyways still lets me like myself.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. And then you get that tangible reward at the end of the day like you described earlier. I think that makes a lot of sense, we could all relate to that. Is there something in particular, Alex, do you want to take a sip of water?
Alex Boyd:
Yeah, sure.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah, take a moment here. Let me just mark it so we can take a big breath because you've been talking a lot and you're doing so good.
Alex Boyd:
I heard one time, I think it was something Prince said about his work ethic and he was saying that if he wasn't in the studio working, then the muse was going to go give Michael Jackson that song. I love that. I do definitely think like I'm not a super woo-woo kind of spiritual person, but I do have this sense sometimes that my creativity isn't necessarily all me, like it's something out there in the universe and it's channeling me at times. And I feel like if I'm not at my bench, it is going to go somewhere else. It needs an outlet.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah, I can do it.
Alex Boyd:
And I don't know, honestly when I say that, I'm like, I don't know if that's true, but it's really a productive way to think, regardless of it's truth. It keeps me in the studio and it keeps me working. And like I said before, the more I'm working, the less I feel those creative doldrums.
Courtney Gray:
The laws are the... Yeah, repetition too. I think that was some of the best advice I ever heard was just get your body to the bench and the rest will channel, like you said, and will kind of flow, and some days are going to be really productive and some will be disastrous. I will have those challenges that just nothing seems to go right, et cetera. Such is life, right?
Alex Boyd:
Yeah.
Courtney Gray:
I love that though, that just keep yourself motivated. And of course making a creative passion into work is something to navigate. Can you talk a little bit about what that was like for you.
Alex Boyd:
Honestly, I don't know if I'd recommend it for everybody. I think we have this sense in our society that like, if I've got this hobby I love, I should try to find a way to turn it into a business. Just kind of a hustle kind of ethic. I don't think that's necessarily for everybody. There are definitely people I know who had a great love of jewelry and tried to make a business out of it and they don't like making jewelry that much anymore. And I think they maybe would be happier if it was just a thing they did on the side rather than making a bunch of production work and going to shows all the time.
Alex Boyd:
Some people love that life and it works great for them. I definitely think we need to know ourselves and what works well for us. I think honestly if I had to do trade shows and travel a bunch for work, I would probably not enjoy myself as much. I really am in a lucky position where I, because of social media, I can reach a global audience without having to leave my studio. I think it's obviously right into this day and age been huge for me because nobody's leaving.
Courtney Gray:
Right. Everybody's home.
Alex Boyd:
But even if there were the ability to travel and everyone was attending shows, it just is not a lifestyle that I'd really enjoy.
Courtney Gray:
That's a lot of work.
Alex Boyd:
It's so much work. I didn't think I understood that before I was a working artist. I went to, like there's the Cherry Creek Arts Festival is a big one that comes to Denver every year. And I would just go and look at all the beautiful art and imagine, wow, that looks like such a cool job. You just get to make this stuff and go show it to people. And then I've done a handful of ACC shows and a bunch of local art festivals in Colorado and it's as hard as building houses. It is not easy work by any means.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. It's from the ground up just like foundation to roof.
Alex Boyd:
And it can be emotionally brutal too because one of the things that happens with social media is I don't get people who don't like my work interacting with me. I really get pretty much only positive reinforcement. And when you're doing a show, like I did a show where this lady walked up to my booth, looked at my work and then said, "Meh," and walked away.
Courtney Gray:
You're kidding me. Wow. You got a meh.
Alex Boyd:
I know my work is not for everybody. Absolutely. Honestly I don't want to make work that's for everybody because then I don't feel like I would be being honest to my own aesthetic, but I don't want to know that they didn't like it.
Courtney Gray:
Don't tell me that you don't like it. I get that completely when I share new music with a friend. It's the same with a song. It's not going to be for everybody, but if you can grab that one person out of the audience or that one person from a show who becomes a lifelong fan and buys your work repeatedly or comes to see you perform whatever it is that you're doing creatively, yeah, I'm like, just listen to it and just don't tell me if you don't like it. Just leave it alone or lie to me. I'm fine with that. You can lie.
Alex Boyd:
I've got a handful of people in life who I'm really comfortable taking criticism from and I really respect their viewpoint. And so, if they give me criticism, I'm all for it. It'll help me grow. But it's a small group of people who I feel that way about. In general I'm much more of the, yeah, lie to me. If you don't like it, just lie to me.
Courtney Gray:
Just give me that heart.
Alex Boyd:
I also think if work, if a piece of art is designed for everyone, it's probably not very good.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. It's very... Well, yeah, kind of like a house that's cookie cutter, so to speak, or something, is what I'm envisioning as we talk about building and how that relates.
Alex Boyd:
I think it's designed for a customer who doesn't have a strong sense of their own aesthetic values and they're looking for cues from the world for what they should consume. And that's not my customer. I want that person who knows their style and thinks this fits me.
Courtney Gray:
I love that. Yeah. I think it's important to zoom in on what kind of people you are creating for. I think it takes a minute in our career path to kind of get a handle on who is that ideal customer for you. Do you find any commonalities in your customers, like certain personality type or, I don't know, character, et cetera?
Alex Boyd:
I would say my best customers are jewelers. I think I'm kind of an art jeweler's jeweler in a way. I do a lot of work that's really labor intensive and I don't think that a lot of people who don't have kind of an education in, maybe not jewelry but at least craft have a lot of respect for the labor that can go into a piece. So I would say that's the most common thing that my customers have is there are some sort of craftsmen or artists.
Courtney Gray:
So they can relate to the labor involved. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's great. I love that. All right. You want to do some rapid fire? Are you up for this?
Alex Boyd:
Let's do it.
Courtney Gray:
I'm pulling this out for you, Alex, because I just think it's going to be fun. All right. So no thinking, just answering off the top of your mind.
Alex Boyd:
I never think before I start talking. Shouldn't be a problem.
Courtney Gray:
Awesome. All right. The most inspired part of the day for you to work?
Alex Boyd:
Morning.
Courtney Gray:
Morning. Favorite place to create or to come up with ideas?
Alex Boyd:
At my bench.
Courtney Gray:
Of course, easy one. Favorite color.
Alex Boyd:
Green.
Courtney Gray:
Like your eyes, right? You have really, really intense green eyes.
Alex Boyd:
Like probably 75% of my clothing. Almost everything I wear is green.
Courtney Gray:
I love it. I love it. One habit you're working towards altering.
Alex Boyd:
Better time management.
Courtney Gray:
Elaborate on that for just a second.
Alex Boyd:
I just have times where I don't order what I need to do in the most efficient order, and I don't believe that life is about always being as efficient as possible, but it can help pay your bills to be a little more efficient and thoughtful. And sometimes I just kind of spin my wheels a little bit and don't know what I should be doing next.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. And balancing time with family and energy and all of that.
Alex Boyd:
Yeah. And I'm getting better at it. I definitely have made strides in that direction. It helps. What's really helped more is the more my own work pays for my living, the less exhausted I am because I'm trying to make my own work and satisfy all these demands from the outside world. So I think a big part of getting better at it has just been having more energy to devote to it.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah, absolutely. Balance. It's a big one for all creatives, I think, for sure. Biggest strength of yours in your life.
Alex Boyd:
My abs.
Courtney Gray:
I was waiting for you to pull out the abs or the hair regimen.
Alex Boyd:
I like those too.
Courtney Gray:
I love it.
Alex Boyd:
I think my greatest strength, I don't know if this is really true or not, but it feels like to me is a capacity to take my work incredibly seriously, but not take myself seriously. And having that space to know that what I really do is make pretty things for some of the most privileged people in the world, and I love that. It's great, but it's not saving babies from diseases in third world countries. I don't work for doctors without borders. I have a job that, I think putting beauty into the world has a lot of value, just nowhere near as much value as helping other human beings not suffer does.
Alex Boyd:
And so I always try to have that self-awareness that what I'm doing isn't that important, but I still treat it like it is when I'm at the bench. I need every surface as perfect as I can make it. I need every moment as focused as I'm capable of being. But I don't want to be a jerk. I feel like a lot of the time people who take their work really seriously can be a little dry and a little unpleasant to be around, and I don't want to be that.
Courtney Gray:
I like that. That's a good way to approach your creativity. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Alex Boyd:
A firetruck.
Courtney Gray:
I knew you're going to make me laugh. A firetruck, okay.
Alex Boyd:
That's what I used to say when I was a little kid. When people asked me what I wanted to be, for a long time it was a firetruck, and they thought I meant a fire man. I didn't, I wanted to be a firetruck.
Courtney Gray:
The ladder, the whole bit.
Alex Boyd:
I've come to realize that's not technically feasible. But a boy can dream.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah, you can. I love that answer. So that's a great segue into this question for you too. From your age today, what would you tell your younger self? Or what advice would you give Alex Boyd maybe 10 years ago?
Alex Boyd:
Just that it's going to be okay and even if it isn't, all the anxiety that you're feeling isn't helping you. None of the anxiety got me any further. So I would just say, yeah, just work your hardest and don't worry about too much.
Courtney Gray:
It always works out one way or another.
Alex Boyd:
Well, and even if it doesn't work out, by worrying about it so much, you just suffer twice. You just suffer before it all comes crumbling down, and then as it's all crumbling down.
Courtney Gray:
And it makes it harder to handle, I think, too because we're worn out already. Worn out with worry.
Alex Boyd:
Anxiety eats up so much creative energy too. I mean, I think I'm a little bit of a congenitally anxious person. I've always been as long as I can remember. I've always been a little bit of a worrier and I think that that has maybe helped me to not take myself so seriously like as a coping mechanism for that. But it's never done me any good.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. That's not the preparation butterflies we were talking about earlier that are actually helpful or useful. It's more useless suffering for sure. So from your age today, what advice would you give your future self? Same thing, to chill out?
Alex Boyd:
Yeah. It'll probably be exact same message. Maybe eat less carbs.
Courtney Gray:
There you go. For those abs.
Alex Boyd:
I'm not going to get away with this forever.
Courtney Gray:
That's right. Alex, can I ask how old you are now?
Alex Boyd:
I'm 37.
Courtney Gray:
37. Oh, that's an awesome age. Might say that about every age because that's an awesome age. I have two boys and they've been awesome at every stage. Sometimes a little more difficult to handle, but mostly just like, wow, just such different. Our perspective and everything that shifts as we grow as humans is kind of such an adventure.
Alex Boyd:
I love it. I find the older I get, the happier I get. And I'm sure at some point there might be some physical issues that come into play that make it harder to be as happy. When your body hurts all the time, it can be difficult. But I'm hoping that that's a ways off and I try to take pretty decent care of myself to postpone that as much as possible. But especially emotionally and mentally, the older I get, the better I feel.
Courtney Gray:
Well, and the wiser we get too. I think we start to let go a little bit more of worry hopefully and to the anxieties of when we just know less or haven't experienced as much.
Alex Boyd:
Yeah. Also life's easier now. I used to have to scramble a lot harder to pay my bills and have a home and all of that. And as you get older, ideally making a living becomes a little easier and that honestly might be a huge part of why I'm happier now is because I'm not working 80 hours a week in order to have a still kind of just scraped by sort of existence. I'm working just like 50 hours a week and I'm pretty comfortable. I've got a house in the hood on a busy street and it's small and my truck is 20+ years old, but I'm in my studio every day. I've got a beautiful girlfriend. She's a great jeweler. Her name's Bailey Acebo. So we really share this passion. We can nerd out on jewelry all the time. I've got the cutest puppy ever.
Courtney Gray:
What's the puppy's name?
Alex Boyd:
Lieutenant Ellen Ripley.
Courtney Gray:
Oh, now I love it all even more, yes.
Alex Boyd:
We just call it Ripley though.
Courtney Gray:
Ripley. Nice. Behind the scenes, Alex and I were just talking and he showed me a beautiful piece that he's working on. It looks finished.
Alex Boyd:
It is finished, yeah.
Courtney Gray:
With the Sapphire. Tell me about the stone again.
Alex Boyd:
It's a color change Sapphire from Umba, Tanzania, cut by Anna Gilbert. She's on Instagram under Trebliganna, which is just Anna Gilbert backwards, but it sounds exotic.
Courtney Gray:
It does.
Alex Boyd:
She's an amazing gem cutter. She cuts these really, really different shaped stones. So I had her custom cut me this color change teal Sapphire and put it into a ring. And I think on Christmas I'm going to ask her to marry me.
Courtney Gray:
Oh my gosh, it's so exciting. Then we won't publish till after Christmas so you'll have decided like, okay.
Alex Boyd:
So if she says no, I'll have you cut this part.
Courtney Gray:
Yes, and let me know. What would you say to somebody out there, Alex, who's just kind of getting started or learning about the tools. I mean, it's kind of like to your past self question that I asked, but maybe you have something else to share.
Alex Boyd:
I would just say that it can sometimes feel like you're not making progress and you're not moving forward, but if you could step back and see where you'll be in a decade, you will be amazed by the progress that you're making as long as you just keep working. And so, just put your head down and get to work and things will happen. A lot of the things that will make you a successful artist not just professionally but creatively, they don't come all at once. They come like individual grains of sand that eventually build up to a giant sand dune. It's definitely worth just keeping at it. I think I spent a lot of time waiting for some kind of big break and I never really had a big break. I just had a lot of little breaks that added up to this life that I feel so fortunate to have. I guess that's what I would say.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah, perseverance. Just one day at a time, one grain of sand at a time. I love that.
Alex Boyd:
And maybe I'd also say make art for yourself. You should always be your primary source of aesthetic choices. We all need to make compromises to pay our bills, but your work should be made to please you first and others second.
Courtney Gray:
Yeah. I think it speaks through the work too, the intention set behind each piece or the way that you approach each process, it really shows in the final product. Yeah. I love that, Alex. Thanks for sharing with us and taking time out to chat with us and share your thoughts and your experience with the community. We love all of you guys. Anything else you want to say?
Alex Boyd:
Just thank you so much...