Alison Jean Cole

Alison Jean Cole is a lifelong self-proclaimed rock and mineral nerd who lives in the Pacific Northwest. She spends a great deal of time traveling throughout the western states in search of cool rocks to chop up. She particularly loves colorful rocks and will also dig some out of buckets in rock shops, too.

She is a proud member of the Mt. Hood Rock Club and teaches lapidary arts (stone cutting) in their club shop. The objects she makes are crafted in her small shop at home. She takes large chunks of rough material to cut into slabs on a really big rock saw, then the shapes are trimmed out of the slabs on a smaller rock saw. She uses successive grits to polish each stone by hand on a rudimentary faceting machine. The process is arduous but rewarding.

The greatest joy of working with rocks and minerals for Alison is collecting the material - her "job" is to drive out as far as she can on dirt tracks to canyons and abandoned mines to look for treasure. She thinks rocks and minerals are the beauty of the Earth. They are a picture of the world before our time.