"On the bench": Monica Marcella, Santa Monica jeweler

Monica Marcella Guerra has spent “22 years on the bench,” as she calls showing up at her work station. “Going to the mat” and meeting what comes up appeals to her as an image—she’s been practicing yoga since she discovered it at 21. 

She’s been practicing this practical magic of making since she was in single digits. “I’ve been making jewelry since I could put a bead on a string,” she says. She and her paternal grandmother chose necklaces from the thrift store, cutting the string to release the plastic baubles, panning for the sparkly ones.

Her grandmother spread hand towels tautly on the kitchen table so the beads wouldn’t roll off and be lost. Monica would grab the tiny, loose orbs with her small fingers. Recombine, re-string. Her grandmother would make tortillas, so the scent of creativity was delicious and homey. 

When Monica declared she was finished, her grandmother would ask her about the creative choices she’d made seemingly without thinking. It taught her to eavesdrop on her own process. What would it look like if you made it with three instead of two strands? Her grandmother reported her physical responses—How does it feel on? This feels heavy, but I like the weight. It feels substantial—reminded Monica that jewelry is on the body, so the body’s experiences of adornment could never be discounted. Jewelry is an art form that combines our corporeality with ideas. In this way, we embody and signal ideas about culture, beauty, and our identities. 

Monica modeled this curiosity and asked her grandmother about her color choices and placement. Along with the rice, beans, and tortillas, the future jewelry designer internalized this playful curiosity around making wearable art. “These were wonderful conversations about design,” Monica marvels. 

“My first critiques, stripped of judgment, were from a woman who was largely illiterate, who didn’t own shoes til she was ten, who was a migrant worker,” Monica says.

Metalwork was “determined early on for me,” Monica says. Her father crafted playgrounds from paper clips (something I’d love to see!). Feeling intimidated at SMC after her tiny Catholic high school, she quelled her nerves in the college jewelry classes by telling herself: “I’m making adornments, little sculptures.”

In one of her first jewelry-making classes, students were taught to make fire with a striker and flint. As the flame roared to life from her action, Monica says she felt a “gush” of love. 

She laughs. “Love at first strike was quickly amended to I suck at this, I love it.” A deeper, more permanent bond. “Everybody that starts off sucks so hard for so long. Our fingers have to catch up with where our brains need to go.”

While working as a restaurant hostess in fancy Santa Monica restaurants, code-switching between front-of-house hobnobbing with millionaires and translating for the dishwashers. “Advocating for my people shocked them that I was fluent in Spanish. Customers would frequently ask if I spoke English.” It's easy to forget that, like our gems, we are multifaceted.

After four semesters at SMC, Tina told Monica to go for a degree. She earned her BFA at Cal State Long Beach in metalsmithing and design before moving cross-country for her MFA in Jewelry Metals at UMass Dartmouth. Relocated to New Bedford (of Moby Dick fame), the program was an “Eden for the Arts” before it recently folded. 

Working in studio spaces carved out of once-cavernous rooms in the former Star department store 3,000 miles from her birthplace, Monica felt extra close to her grandmother. “Since she was small enough to fit behind and under the furniture, my grandmother’s first job was cleaning rich people’s homes, which to a poor ten year-old could feel as large and opulent as a department store,” Monica says. Here, she and her beloved ancestor echoed each other across generations, both peeking behind curtains. 

Monica’s classes at SMC and Long Beach had prepared her for the rigors of tangible fabrication—building with sheet metal and wire by hand, versus CAD and other cerebral digital mediums that tend to produce less structurally sound pieces. 

The larger space and multitude of tools inspired Monica to create more performative pieces on a bigger scale. She told herself she could focus on decorative, wearable art after graduation. Her installation, Masa, featured her standing on a mound of dirt in a white-walled gallery rolling out tortillas from her grandma’s recipe. To sear the dough into deliciousness, she forged a brand in the image of the immigrant crossing sign. Another piece, “Crown Jewels of Mexico,” consisted of a dirt crown with shovels and other tools as “jewels.” The curator’s comment? “Outdated.” This, when the only other native Spanish speaker in the entire building was a janitor.

Her grandmother’s echoes continue to inspire her. “Let me tell you about the beauty and the pain, let me try in this language, or a different language, object, performance, image, something you can put on,” she says about her “multilingual” approach, which she infuses in all of her work, whether sourcing Old Miner diamonds which sparkle best by candlelight and sunshine. Or what she calls “milagros”—miracles embedded in found objects—silver charms featuring everyday objects, tools, parts of the body as a way to direct prayer. 

Wherever you place them becomes an automatic place of reverence. Placed on the bottoms of feet and the palms of hands, like metallic henna designs, are reminders of and reverence for labor. Ours and everyone else’s.

Like many artists, Monica admits that, after she found her way back to the art after a few years of intensive motherhood, she’s much more productive after having kids. They galvanize her to manage her time well, to get on the bench without expectations and without fail. She originally made her milagros charms for her daughter, but people asked for them. Drilling down into the specific is the only way to reach the universal, we agreed. “Get into that one moment that only happened to you and everyone gets it,” Monica says. When customers asked, “What are they?” Monica modeled her grandmother’s lessons, encouraging others to tap into their own resonance: “How do you interpret it?"

These days, Monica’s beautiful pieces are displayed in several stores. She’s a frequent go-to for engagement rings, wedding bands, and anniversary presents. This month, one of her gorgeous rings is featured in Vanity Fair’s “On Jewellery” issue. Monica’s Instagram, where many of her clients find her, serves as a kind of peg board and working tool, and is its own reliquary of treasures.