Russ Zabler: Inspiring Jewelry Designs
H
ow many careers were ultimately launched by the famed Peninsula School of Art, you may wonder? One such artist is Russ Zabler, who was taking PenArt photography classes back in the early 1970s. “The funny thing is, I happened to be talking to a couple of professors on the front steps of the School and Bill [Griffiths] just had this cool vibe going so I asked him what class he taught,” Zabler recounts. “He said Metal Arts, so I signed up for it and the rest is history!” After the fateful metal arts class, Zabler didn’t return to college. “Jewelry had lit a fire in me,” Zabler said. Instead, he worked at a trade shop doing jewelry repair, then became a bench jeweler for a retailer, pursuing his own work in summer art shows. In 1983 Zabler bought a shop in Ephraim and remade it into the current Zabler Design Jewelers, and a year later also acquired a store in Clarendon Hills, IL.
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