Celebrate Fall ’25 Flourish Challenge: Lost and Found

Joan Hammond began working in metal in 1994, when she started taking metalsmithing classes as an antidote to documenting computer software. What she discovered was a medium that not only used her training in painting, printmaking, and ceramics, but also opened the possibilities of creating art that can be worn. Family artifacts and history, plants and animals, and the textiles and jewelry of non-Western cultures inspire her current work, which she executes using various fabrication techniques, including chasing and repoussé.

Hammond exhibits locally and nationally. Her work has been published in Metalsmith magazine’s Exhibition in Print. She is a member of the Seattle Metals Guild and an active volunteer and instructor at BARN.

Ann holds a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, in Philadelphia and a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. Her visual art practice includes artists books, printmaking, and photography, and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has been the recipient of New York Council on the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts grants, numerous artist residencies, and is represented in museum and individual collections. She taught photography at State University of New York in New Paltz, N.Y., for 33 years and moved to the Puget Sound area recently from Ashland, Ore., where she also was a volunteer instructor with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

Karen was born and raised in Pasadena, Calif., and graduated from the Los Angeles County College of Nursing. She earned her bachelor's degree from Chapman College and was an operating room nurse and manager at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles until she married Christopher Olch, a Navy medical officer, in 1985. They lived in Maryland, California, Connecticut, and Japan before being transferred to the Pacific Northwest. They settled in Kitsap County in 1997 and on Bainbridge Island in 2017. Their adult son, Matthew, is a video game animator in the Seattle area.
Karen has always loved to look at and collect jewelry, so when she took her first class in BARN's Jewelry Studio, she was hooked. She understands the importance of organization and working together to provide an atmosphere of safety, judicious use of resources, and enjoyment of the creative processes in crafting jewelry.