After all, he uses some rather unique material.
“It’s a free-form copper,” he said. “We work in stainless steel, copper and glass. The joy of stainless steel is you don’t have to polish it.”
But he understands that some women will do a double take when they see what the jewlerty is made of.
“It takes a very artistic and creative woman to want to wear my jewelry,” Horne said. “They have to have a certain uniqueness about them.”
Horne is an artist who runs Creative World LCC in Orlando, and as often as he can, Horne gets out into the community to display hhis work – at art shows and exhibits or, as he did on Thursday, at charitable events like the one held at Wearable Art by Scott Laurent, the shop at 340 Park Ave. in Winter Park. That shop was hosting a fund-raising event for the non-profit organization Compassionate Hands and Hearts Breast Cancer Outreach.
Horne set up a small workshop outside the shop, where he crafted stainless steel necklaces and other jewelry, which was being given away as a free gift to any customer to purchased from than $50 in the shop that day.
Although officially in his retirement years, Horne said he still loves the opportunity to practice his craft.
“I’ve been an artist for 50 years,” he said. “I’ll be 80 this year.”
Eighty years old – but not slowing down, he added.
“I’ve been doing this for such a long time,” Horne said. “I was originally a potter. But the ceramics got too heavy. So I came up with this idea – put all your jewelry into one suitcase.”
For years, Horne was an art professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He retired from that position and, like many others in cold climate states, opted to settle in Central Florida.
But he didn’t opt to retire from his work, and established Creative World here.
“We do customer work,” he said. “We do probably 20 to 24 art fairs in Florida every year – in Mount Dora, and we do the one in Daytona, and Halifax, and Venice. We do them all – except Winter Park.”
For some reason, he said, Creative World never gets chosen to participate in a Winter Park art show.
“We’ve never been in Winter Park,” he said. “If the judges didn’t pick this (jewelry), they’re not going to let us be in the show. It’s highly competitive. But we still do it this way.”
What he does appreciate, Horne said, is the work of today’s young aspiring artists.
“It’s very, very contemporary,” he said. “I like some of the things the young artists are doing. I think it’s great with the new technology they have.”
To learn more about Creative World, call 407-522-2753 or email te65be@bellsouth.net.
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