Artist Renee Johnson’s work had been described as cutting edge, fantastically fun and funky, and true works of wearable art.

Renee became interested in jewelry when she owned an art gallery in Lincoln, NE, and began to see jewelry in the context of artistic expression rather than commercially produced decoration.  Though interested in a wide range of arts and crafts, she found that the economy and physical scale of jewelry made it inviting and accessible.  Her earliest explorations of the field found her dismantling and reassigning uses to vintage cuff links, watchbands and pins.  She was soon incorporating found objects and pedestrian objects such as typewriter keys into her work, finding the possible combinations to be inexhaustible, particularly when unafraid to juxtapose different time periods and styles in her pieces.  It was a short but meaningful conceptual leap that took her from recycling old jewelry to jewelry as an act of recycling in itself and the birth of the Green Bling line.

Green Bling’s line of jewelry is made of 90% recycled materials.  Each piece is crafted from vintage beads, old jewelry chains and findings, found objects and parts from a number of unusual items. The rubber used is from recycled bicycle inner-tubes hand cut by the artist. Each piece is made in limited editions, many being one of a kind.

The rubber salvaged from discarded inner tubes is a durable and readily accessible material which offers a multiplicity of applications Cut into rings, strips or spirals, its color and texture provides a stark contrast next to glass, porcelain or stainless steel.  Each piece she creates asserts the ethos of Green thought and action.