Designer Spotlight: Lee Downey of Artifactual

For the last 30 years, Lee Downey has created unusual baubles, jewelry, belt buckles and sculptures.  Born in Barstow, CA, Lee now lives and works out of Bali.  The designer/jeweler/sculpture gains much of his inspiration from his frequent trips to Mexico, Central America, Tucson and Santa Fe. 

Lee is often recognized for his pieces that feature the skull symbol.  While Lee realizes that people often attribute the skull with death, for him,  "...Hells Angels, lots of Asian and Mexican reference, skateboarders, and the Grateful Dead will always be the ultimate absconders of the symbol.  The artwork of those musical times was resplendent with skeletal forms, both new and ancient, blending in the old religions with the new awareness of expanded horizons".

Most recently, Governor Schwarzenegger was photographed with Mayor Bloomberg for the cover of TIME Magazine wearing one of Lee's bold sterling silver skull belt buckles.  Guv Terminator clad in a conservative suit with a massive skull belt buckle peaking out from behind his tie...now that's pretty bad-ass...

Skull art is Lee's "thing", but it doesn't stop there.  On 

perhaps the other end of the spectrum, he has produced

some amazing one-of-a-kind butterfly pendants. 

In creating these butterflies as well as his other designs, Lee has been known to work with unusual materials such as prehistoric walrus ivory, excavated by Eskimos on the Bering Sea Coast.