Camille Wild — Mountain Metalsmith

If you listen closely to the wind that cuts through the jagged alpine edges, you might hear the gentle jingle of metal bouncing with the cadence of a climber making her way up the mountain. That would be coming from Camille Wild, a Colorado native metalsmith, climber and social worker who, aside from wearing a rack of climbing gear, is sporting her handmade jewelry with silver fringes dangling from a jasper stone. “Strength and femininity are one in the same,” she believes.

Wild was introduced to the art world at a very young age through her mom, Theresa Pytell, one of Colorado’s fine jewelers. Early memories connecting with her mom weave with hours spent laying beads out or playing in the windows at her art shows on Denver’s Santa Fe Street for First Fridays.

She felt an immediate attraction to the art community and says, “I saw that expression of self is okay in that world, that you can take whatever avenue you want and be yourself.” But for a while, she wasn’t quite sure what her own place was in it.

As a kid, Wild had been a dancer, doing everything from swing dancing at the Mercury Café in Denver to tap, jazz and ballet. She found expression through movement. And when she wasn’t honing a routine or fiddling with beads, she was outside playing amongst the Colorado rocks and trees. Something about the rocks had always captured her attention. In her teenage years she became a rock climber, and later, a mountain guide.

While working as a mountain guide, she noticed there was a certain mold that guides were compelled to fit into. She wondered how to blend her own unique skill set and confidence into what was expected of her.

After a long tedious day of working, she would pop down her Ford Ranger’s tailgate and make jewelry. The process was meditative forher, but much more important was the message she valued getting across. “Wearing dangling earrings on the mountain and giving jewelry to the other guides felt like saying it’s okay to express yourself and be who you want to be inthe mountains, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” shares Wild.

In her pieces, Wild tries to embody the somewhat whimsical feeling she gets moving her body along the San Juan mountains, desert ribs and drainages. She chooses stones like landscape jasper and turquoise to showcase the earthy tones juxtaposed against the blue sky and creates pieces that have kinetic movement in them, like bolo ties or earrings with metal fringes.

The actual process of translating the idea onto metal is intuitive for her. Like her hand reaching for a piece of climbing gear from her harness, she’ll reach for a tool and use it. Physically, the process is very demanding. “If I go climbing and make jewelry on the same day, my tendons and hands are shot,” she says. “But, it feels so satisfying to have something that was in your head be created in your hands. It’s like this release when everything within your body is telling you to get it out and put it into something.”

Although she is often encouraged to take her jewelry to bigger galleries, she is hesitant. “I want to keep this a sacred creative process,” she explains. She compares it to her relationship with climbing and how taking a pause recently from mountain guiding has allowed her to rediscover it from a place of love and joy, instead of a “supposed to” tick-list. She values going with what feels right in the moment, and she loves encouraging and watching other people blossom in their own creativity and expression. “It’s beautiful what people can come up with in their minds, and it’s a gift we have in this world. Find your own weirdness in it,” encourages Wild.

Learn more at etsy.com/shop/camillewildhandmade or @camillewildhandmade.

Originally published in the Summer 2023 issue of Spoke+Blossom.