Luana Coonen

Luana was born and raised in Hawaii by her mother - a full-time artist with a degree in botany. Within a rainforest backyard playground, her childhood was rich with creativity, in a theme of green. When moving to the San Francisco Bay Area to earn her BFA in jewelry/metalsmithing from California College of the Arts, she quickly noticed the dramatic contrast of a densely populated city to the lush, unhurried, pace of tropical Hawaii.

She expresses her deep abiding love of nature's tiniest wonders through her artwork, finding ways within her work as a jeweler to amplify the beauty of simple natural objects and bring attention to our emotions. This is reinforced by her passion to use found objects, renewable materials, and recycled metals.