Janice Lee Ripley is an artist who designs jewelry and composes in flowers.
She does this in Ubud, Bali, where she has recently settled after some ten years of extended visits to the island working with Bali’s traditional silversmiths for her boutique line of handmade jewelry, Camenae.
Camenae was founded in the San Francisco Bay area in 1987, and Janice Lee Ripley is the owner and principal designer. The Camenae were the four Roman muses, deities of springs, wells, and fountains, who cured disease, foretold the future, and inspired poets, artists, and musicians.
Janice is a New Yorker who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Webster University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute.
“I’m a painter and print-maker. I came to jewelry in a roundabout way,” she says. “My first jewelry pieces were adobe.”
Janice continues to work in materials beyond those of conventional jewelers. Her exquisitely composed pieces may comprise slate, embroidered cloth, or tiny fragments of Balinese manuscript carved on palm leaf. It’s a creative approach that greatly expands the notion of a precious material.
Janice takes the same sculptural approach to her compositions in flowers, which she carries out from her flower shop in Ubud called Bloomz, choosing plants and fruits for the vividness of their shape, color, and texture.
Her house and design studio perch high on the edge a river valley with a wide view that scrolls out in a tropical landscape of coconut palms, banana trees, and groves of banyans clustering around a Hindu temple. It’s a place of deep quiet, where she also practices her other pursuits — meditation, Sanskrit language studies, and Chinese brush painting.
“Bali is ideal for creative work,” she says. “It’s dynamic and cosmopolitan, but it’s also a place that puts a premium on harmony.”
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