Her dad tried making sourdough. Her mom crafted cocktails.
She made polymer clay earrings, with a philanthropic incentive.
In her junior summer, Caylea Barone ’21 was back at her family home in Lagrangeville, N.Y., completing her research project remotely due to the pandemic. It was already a heavy time, and then in the aftermath of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murders, she wanted to find purpose. “[I thought,] I just need to do something, and I need to find a way to use what I do for good,” Barone says. “I remember having conversations every night with my parents, saying, ‘We should be doing more. Every day, we should be doing something.’”
So, every day, she retreated to her parents’ basement to create bold, statement earrings in hand-mixed hues. Every dollar she earned from jewelry sales that summer was donated to organizations advancing justice for Black lives, like The Bail Project’s National Revolving Bail Fund, The Loveland Foundation, and NAACP Empowerment Programs. After her initial success, Barone turned her hobby into Made by Caylea, a small business with the motto “Do Good. Look Good. Feel Good.” Post-graduation, she still runs the business part time and donates a portion of her proceeds to social and environmental justice organizations each month.
Polymer clay is a fresh medium for Barone, who double majored in art and art history and environmental studies at Colgate. A natural illustrator, Barone previously struggled with sculpture as an artist, and she uses Made by Caylea to strengthen that muscle while still fostering her creativity. While earrings represent the bulk of her business, Barone also crafts hair clips and necklaces. Much of her jewelry incorporates movement, through gold jump rings that interlock the individual clay pendants. “I rarely make anything that I wouldn’t personally wear, unless it’s a custom order,” she says. “I create a lot with earth tones: greens, mauves, and maroon, just because those are colors I naturally gravitate toward.”
Her process for creating new pieces runs like this: Using a pasta machine, Barone conditions the clay to an even thickness. Then, she grabs an X-Acto knife or a 3D-printed cutter to delicately shape the jewelry. Barone tops each piece off with some combination of acrylic paint, marbling techniques, or a screen-printed design, then cures the clay in an oven. Post-baking, each piece is carefully drilled, sanded, washed, and assembled. The whole procedure happens after her 9–5 job as a project manager at a renewable energy development company (her partner often wakes up to find her still creating in the basement at 1 a.m.).
Next on the agenda for Barone: law school. And, she plans to continue growing Made by Caylea during nights and weekends. “I’ve always wanted to be an environmental lawyer and an artist,” she says.
Barone first noticed polymer clay earrings while studying abroad in Australia with Professor Chris Henke, her Colgate mentor. Her dad is Carl Barone ’77.