Who is Lynda Spence Ryan?

After retiring (2005). Lynda decided to turn her fifteen-year hobby of creating elegant jewelry into a new career. Lynda’s love of jewelry goes back to her youth when she made copper enameled jewelry with her mother. In 2005, she took classes in wire sculpture and fell in love with the art. She was raised in a family of artists and subjected her design ideas to her family for their critical view. The outcome was positive and sent her on her way to share her designs with the public. One of her previous hobbies and part-time activities was teaching women how to sew on knits. She feels her knowledge of color, line and design gained from her training to teach sewing has helped with creative ideas in making jewelry.
 

Her designs are unique. Lynda starts with unusual colors or shapes of semi-precious gemstones and uses sterling silver or 14K gold-filled wire to create a sculpture around each. With the increased cost of gold and silver she has introduced copper for a lower cost and healing properties for many. She completes each set by coordinating matching or contrasting semi-precious beads to provide a one-of-a-kind design. 

When Lynda began her wire-wrapping education, she started in a local bead store (no longer open) and a bead festival class taught by a teacher trained at William Holland. Next, she took several Preston Ruether DVD courses. In summer of 2008 and again in an advanced designer retreat in 2010, she had the privilege of refreshing her skills and learning new techniques by taking workshops from her adopted mentor Dale Cougar Armstrong – well-known wire-sculpture artist, author, and teacher. The earlier workshops gave her innovative ideas in creating bracelets and earring designs. The designer workshop provided insight in creating elegant, sculpted necklaces. Dale’s DVD’s and her book continuously provide new skills in addition to enhancing the previously learned skills. October 2012 was brush-up time with a semi-private class with Dale to learn new skills and hone the previous ones. Dale has endorsed Lynda for her skills and expertise on LinkedIn.  Lynda has learned Viking Knit to make elegant chains for her one-of-a-kind pendants or adding to her sculptures. Occasionally, she creates chain maille bracelets and earrings for a distraction before returning to the wire-sculpture. Her creations include pendants, necklaces, earrings, rings, and bracelets.

In January 2011, Lynda stepped down from four years as president of Gallery East artist’s cooperative in Belleview, Florida to have more time for her creations. Her recent history includes, membership in the Appleton Museum where many of her creations were sold in the gift shop, membership in the Artisans Guild Gallery in Gainesville (a coop having 40 plus members – each year she was in the top five of total sales), Florida Artists Gallery (no longer open) in the historic Knight House in Floral City, Marion Culture Alliance (MCA) in Ocala and Rainbow Spring Art – a coop gallery where she was president for over two years. In addition, her art has been pictured in Ocala Magazine, and the Ocala Star Banner has printed several stories about her work. She has been awarded Honorable Mention in an Ocala Art Group show and won 2nd Place in sculpture and 3-D competition at Artful Gifts. As a member of Ocala Art Group for a couple of years, she took workshops on painting – acrylic and watercolor to help enhance her creative skills in jewelry making. She has taught basic wire sculpture skills in Floral City, Oxford, and Dunnellon. She also had home parties for jewelry sales of 15 or more or for teaching 4-6 students.

Before Christmas one year, she learned origami and added origami earrings and ornaments made from either Washi paper or imported long fiber papers from Europe to her skills. To finish these, she adds three coats of sealer to protect them from the humid Florida weather and decorates them with crystal beads adding wire sculpture to hang them.

After her husband passed away, she sold her house in Dunnellon Florida and moved to Elkton Florida (summer of 2021) to be closer to family. Before her move, she was working in three of the galleries where she had her jewelry displayed and supplied two other galleries with her art. This obviously kept her busy making jewelry to supply each gallery. Her love of art and Mother Nature’s gemstones kept her enthusiastic about making new creations.