Self-determination

Dillon Rose owners handcraft jewelry from their home studio

“This is Molly and Poncho,” Seth Dazey said, wrangling two big pups to make a path for me at the gate of the Owen Park home he shares with his wife, Rachel, and their two children. 

“Poncho’s a pound dog. His manners need some work. Hopefully we’ll get around to teaching him, but with everything else….” 

He looked around the yard where their tow-headed toddlers ran gleefully. 

“Sometimes I think, ‘maybe when we get employees we’ll have time.’ But,” he laughed, “I think I’m wrong.” 

Seth and Rachel led me inside to their tiny studio, a narrow room about ten feet long that houses Dillon Rose, their metalsmithing and jewelry business. (The name combines each of their middle names.) They worked as Canto del Ave until two years ago when they moved back to Tulsa, their hometown, after many years making jewelry and music with a strong DIY ethic all over Central America and the U.S. 

“When I first started making jewelry,” Rachel said, “I was living out of a backpack. Then I grew into a school bus. Then I had a corner in a cabin. So when we moved here and I had a whole room I was like, whoa, I can shut the door—this is incredible!”

We stood in front of a wall densely hung with hammers, pliers, saws, and wire, near the battered desk she used to work on in that school bus. Time seemed to slow down as light streamed in through big windows onto two of her recent necklaces: one with four huge Australian koroit opals and strong symmetry, another with a smaller opal, whirling with whimsical shapes and textures.

“Texture communicates nostalgia, memory, feeling into the work,” she said. “That’s something that humans can connect with. And I really like that movement, that depth to a piece, that it can take on different faces in different lights.”

“Dynamic,” Seth said. 

“Our motivation comes from the lifestyle dream,” Rachel said. “I can directly connect the work with my freedom. For me it’s all connected.” 

As Dillon Rose sees more success, the Dazeys are navigating a new learning curve with social media and administrative skillsets. (Neither of them went to college, and they weren’t on the Internet much until a couple of years ago.) They’ve recently connected with the entrepreneur basecamp at 36 Degrees North in pursuit of a five-year plan. 

On the creative side, they’re working on their first gallery show as well as collaborating with Lisa Regan and a nonstop variety of trunk shows, from First Friday to the First Street Flea Market. 

“Tulsa’s a great place to be an entrepreneur,” Seth said. “We want to be part of what it’s going to be in the future. I want to wear that badge proudly, that we’re an Oklahoma company.”

In work, art, and life, it’s a balancing act between designing a path and allowing the path to unfold. 

“Being an artist is so much about being friends with failure, not quitting because it didn’t come out the way you wanted,” he said. “On the business end, the hardest part is the vulnerability, having that opportunity to majorly screw up in front of everybody. There’s great risk and you have to make yourself vulnerable to that to succeed.”

Seth showed me one of his own pieces, a mass of copper branches rising out of a piece of driftwood. 

“One of the most amazing things about trees is their capacity to not be balanced. I’m thinking of that cottonwood on the river trail that comes up and over and does that.” He gestured in a long downward curve.“I like to enter into that. Let’s see where this goes. 

“I don’t begin with any kind of drawings or goal. I just try and follow a sense of direction that comes from the piece as I make it. Sometimes I’m not very good at achieving a beautiful object. Other times I’m really happy with the result and proud of the work.”

Find Dillon Rose Feb. 3 at First Friday Art Walk at the Brady Artists Studio; Feb. 4 Trunk Show at Spexton; Feb. 11 Trunk Show at Daniel’s Jewelry in Tahlequah, OK; and Feb. 12 at First Street Flea Market. 

Their jewelry can be found locally at Landella in the Boxyard, 502 E. 3rd St.; The Artery, 119 S. Detroit Ave.; Shades of Brown, 3302 S. Peoria Ave.; and This Land, 1208 S. Peoria Ave., and in Tulsa International Airport.

For more from Alicia, read her article on the Back Gallery exhibition “Home.”