Sisters Wendy Sumner and Cindy Sumner comprise SisterBloc, a jewelry design and production team based in Tucson, Ariz. The two collect antique cookie and keepsake tins from thrift stores for their line of miniature sculptures in the form of earrings, necklaces, pins, and tiaras.
“What we do is almost like traditional collage, except tin is harder to cut than paper,” explains Cindy from the sisters’ shared studio, just off the kitchen in her pink and purple adobe home.
Images are cut from the tin using aircraft shears and tinsnips, then are flattened and filed in shoe-boxes for later use.
Photography by Sanford Furrow
“Pins and big necklaces are much more like a canvas, while the earrings are mostly about color and design and playing with historical shapes,” says Cindy, who received a BFA in metalsmithing and jewelry from the University of Arizona. Once the tin is soldered to a brass or stainless steel backing, tools such as a jeweler’s saw and bench shear are used for finer work.
The two don’t collaborate on pieces but work in
tandem, critiquing each other’s work and helping one another through creative impasses. Their designs evolve from what Cindy jokingly calls their “genetic aesthetic.” The work is suffused with a quirky wit inspired by found images and text — pineapples paired with hearts, skulls dangling from pagodas, and Japanese kanji coupled with Milk-Bone dog biscuits, to name a few.
“One of the things I like about working with a partner is the synergy and silliness that happens,” says Wendy, sitting in the spacious sunroom studio crammed with materials and tools.
This silliness is evident in their line of tiaras. The two wanted to do “something fabulous and big and sculptural and fun,” according to Cindy. Jelly-Bean Rain consists of a little boy in a yellow rain slicker walking through a downpour of jellybeans. “This way you can have your own little wind chime in your brain!” Wendy explains. —Katie Kurtz
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