ABOUT US
Flow is a partnership of two people who share a life, their home, and their jewelry studio business. Both Michael Thee and Mary Wohlgemuth have a graphic arts background that gives their jewelry a recognizable style of clean and thoughtful design, with delightful details of texture, color, and patina. Both take pride in carefully handcrafting and finishing each piece of jewelry.
Michael has been creating jewelry since the mid-'90s when he began an apprenticeship as a goldsmith. He worked as a solo studio jeweler for 10 years and, in 2006, graduated with honors from Northeast Wisconsin Technical College’s jewelry fabrication program. A photographer since age 12, Michael also studied Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
Mary’s background includes a wide variety of creative pursuits and professional experience, including art direction, illustration, and publishing. Her training in metal arts started at Milwaukee Area Technical College in the 1990s. A graduate of Marquette University, she furthered her fine arts education at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. Mary apprenticed with Michael full-time for three years.
Today Mary and Michael are partners in designing and fabricating their jewelry line. Together they also design and market tools for jewelry makers (many made in Milwaukee!), which you can find online on the Etsy marketplace under the shop name FlowStudioSupply. They are active passing the torch to the next generation of metalsmiths, teaching metalwork and stone setting in their hometown, by invitation to other metals studios, and online.
Gemstones are plentiful in Flow’s jewelry line, and Mary and Michael source them from all over the world. In addition to metalwork talents, both partners have lapidary skills and equipment that allow them to cut and form stone slabs into finished shapes called cabochons to use in their jewelry. They create unusual shapes and sizes of extraordinary gemstones you won’t find in mainstream jewelry. Both partners enjoy rockhounding – searching for and gathering those one-of-a-kind fossils and artifacts to take back to the studio so they can reveal the beauty within.
Michael and Mary show their handcrafted jewelry online and at art fairs throughout the Midwest, at their hometown gallery Magpie Jewelry & Metals Studio, and at Patty Fawn's Spirit of the West gallery in Tubac AZ.
