Miche McClendon, a Virginia Beach transplant, found a new home in Laguna Beach and opened a jewelry studio and gallery at 241 Forest Ave.
There she makes and sells necklaces, earrings, rings and bracelets by weaving chains using an ancient technique or hand fabricating each link to cable chains. To create a primitive style she acid etches and forges each piece using simple tools. “Almost all pieces are completely one of a kind,” she says.
Interested in art since childhood, McClendon majored in metal smithing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., and worked at a bronze foundry in Austin, Texas making sculptures and monuments. She has been making jewelry for 12 years and is happy to be living near the ocean again.
McClendon takes custom orders and crafts them in her shop “so people can see how they are made.” Her helper, Darby, a Sheltie greeter, welcomes visitors.
