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Comox jewelry-maker off to Emmys

Dan Walker will present silver rings as gifts to nominees
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Dan Walker will be heading to the Emmys to show his jewelry to nominees in a pre-award event. Photo by Mike Chouinard

A Comox jewelry-maker is bring his wares to the Emmy Awards.

While Dan Walker won’t be at the actual ceremony, he will be showing off some of his creations at an event for Emmy nominees held the day before the awards. He will be setting up in a room where nominees can visit throughout the day. On hand he will have 120 silver, hand-carved rings, to be presented as gifts.

“All the nominees for the Emmys have been invited to come by,” he says.

He usually works in silver but sometimes adds touches of other metals such as copper as detail to his rings. He often engraves West Coast motifs such as sand dollars, waves or orcas.

The event will offer him a chance to promote his work, though he creates the jewelry more as a hobby, one he took up after retiring from his career as an industrial refrigeration mechanic.

“I worked a lot with torches and tools,” he says.

Walker only started working at the craft a couple of years ago, after taking a program at North Island College. He began with weekend courses and then started taking more training to learn all aspects of jewelry-making.

“They teach you all the different facets of being a jewelry-maker,” he says.

Silver, he found, was his preferred medium, so that is where he has focused his efforts, which has included taking some more courses in the U.S.

“I discovered that I really enjoyed the hand-engraving,” he says.

He’s been getting his work into galleries and was at the Filberg Festival in Comox. In the summer, he attended a market event to show his work with other artists and crafters in Christina Lake, B.C., where he grew up. It was there that word of his work started circulating and he ran across a woman who has been working for years to line up gift items for Emmy nominees. This led to the opportunity to show his work at the pre-Emmy event.

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His wife, Theresa Brossard, is also going to present gifts, 120 to match her husband’s, though she will provide a small gift card to be given out to youth in California – specifically, a $5 bill (US) along with inspirational sayings.

“I decided I would like to support youth in need,” she says.

She made connections with an organization Youth Emerging Stronger that works with at-risk young people in the Los Angeles area and will let them decide how to distribute the gifts, but she hopes to create more awareness of issues affecting these young people while she is down south.

The couple will be driving down to California starting Tuesday, so they can take their time and enjoy the ride along the way. Walker sees this all as a good opportunity to show his work, and if they’re lucky, make some connections.

“It’s an adventure to go off and say we’ve done it,” he says.



mike.chouinard@comoxvalleyrecord.com

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Dan Walker will bring 120 rings for Emmy nominees. Image, Walker Designs