Theresa Blanding’s presence lives and breathes her unique creativity. From a young age, her personal adornment was centered on statement necklaces. Loving the complexity of multiple-strands, glass, and gemstones all textured in an elegant manner, she collected the pieces that inspired her the most. Busy as a corporate executive, her daily costume was her palette.

Having already earned two engineering degrees, offered the opportunity to go back to school, it was clear that she should acknowledge her creativity in a more direct way. She began to take art classes at Naropa University. While painting with acrylics and oils, casting bronze, dying textiles, and creating mixed media installations, she discovered that art wasn’t about the techniques she was learning. Art was about making the unknowable known. As Maynard Soloman said, “a work of art is a constantly renewable source of energy.” Staying true to her personal aesthetic and exploring the intangible within, she began to channel her creativity freely into her painting.

Moving to Sedona, abstract painting turned into jewelry-making, where her painterly ways found expression in gemstones and glass. The earlier symbolism of her paintings began to emerge in the Hexagram Series that began in 2008, with her representation of the 64 hexagrams of the I'Ching. The response to the emotive power of these pieces and their unique beauty was immediate. As a museum director commented, "I'm not usually emotional. However, Theresa's work brings out an emotive quality in me that is quite profound." 

Her only connection to making jewelry had happened in the late 70s in a dream. In that dream she was in a New York museum admiring a profusion of necklaces lying in cases. As she walked out of the museum, she woke up and realized that those necklaces were designed and made by her. She quickly drew a picture of one that she carried around for years; although it was eventually lost in one of her moves. When she began to make jewelry, she remembered this dream and wished that she hadn't lost that drawing. All she remembered was the necklace was made with carnelian.

In 2014, as Theresa was finishing one of the final pieces of the Hexagram Series, she was suddenly struck by its sacred nature and felt that it needed to be encased and protected. Upon completion of the entire series, cases for four specific pieces were created and professionally photographed. Shortly after the photographer departed, seeing all four cases lying side by side on a glass-top table, Theresa had a sudden recollection of her NYC museum vision from so long ago. She met the concept of a vitrine for the first time when she described this epiphany to a fellow artist.

Continuing to contemplate the tableau of the four cases, suddenly the new series’ title arrived: Vitrine Vision. In early 2017, she was mutated by the idea of Symbolic Artifacts in a documentary about the migration of humans to all corners of the Earth. This catalyzed her final understanding of this personal project that had spanned four decades in her life. It was all a journey to create the Vitrine Vision of Symbolic Artifacts.