Sometimes a passion begins when you’re only six years old. In Japan. When you learn from your playmates that you can attach a string to a rhinoceros beetle, and it flies like a kite—until you release it. The daughter of an Air Force officer, Peggy Ballard spent her youth in Japan and the Philippines, never losing her fascination with insects. Today, she honors their value in our lives by creating their imprint into silver jewelry. Homes and old buildings are a natural warehouse for finding deceased specimens: honeybees, lightning bugs, June bugs, wasps—all showing the intricate marvels of nature.
She begins by imprinting the skeleton into a silicon mold. Using a fine silver “clay”—a malleable form of silver microscopic particles held by a binder that is released when fired in the kiln—she creates a silver replica of that insect. Popping it out of the silicon mold, she takes a template to turn it into pendant size and air dries it before firing it in her kiln at 1625 degrees. This allows the silver to solidify. The final steps of polishing with a brush and tumbling transform each one-of-a-kind pendants into a fine piece of silver jewelry.
Ballard quickly noticed that “people bought her honey bees like crazy.” She couldn’t understand the reasoning so she asked. “They told me they saw the association between the bee and women who are workers, producers, gatherers.” Ballard added, “Being allergic to bees, I don’t have quite the same connection.”
For those not drawn to insects, Ballard creates plant and heart pendants. “Because they are hollow,” she explains, “I put cork in the center because it burns off, and I bury it in sand when I fire it.” Nature, in its splendor, also draws Ballard to weeds because their flowers are often quite tiny, yet intricate in their beauty. She always imprints plants on the back side of the insect pendants.
When asked about how the corona pandemic has affected her creativity, she admits—as do most artists—it has gone into deep hibernation. As an essential worker at the Veterans Home in Quincy, and a teacher with in-class and remote teaching requirements at Culver-Stockton, and caring for aging parents newly moved to Quincy, she has rarely entered her studio since March.
But recently she received a call from California. A gentleman had found her website featuring her other passion—collages—and asked if she’d like to participate in a five-person “roundtable” collage creation. When completed, it will be exhibited in Berkeley, California. Immediately she said yes, and for the first time in weeks, stepped into her studio. Ballard admits, “If I cannot come to a place where I feel safe, it is not a very creative way of being. It is like hibernation.” But just as the eggs of insects lie buried in the ground waiting to hatch in the warmth of spring, for Peggy Burchard-Ballard, creativity will return.
Peggy's jewelry and collages will be on exhibit beginning October 10 and running through the first week of November. An open house will be held on Saturday, October 10 from 1 to 6:00. Stop in the gallery anytime between 1 and 5:30 on that day to receive your ticket for our free drawing at 5:30. You do not have to be present to win.
