Jessica Boykin, an 18 year old from Alabama, has taken a creative approach to raising awareness about the environmental implications of the recent Gulf Coast oil catastrophe.
The Southern teen has created her own business designing jewelry from tar balls collected along the oil-coated Gulf Coast beach line. She calls her jewelry line “Oil Coast Jewelry”.
Jessica and her father began collecting tar balls near their beach house on Dauphin Island, Alabama this past 4th of July.
“The beach looked fairly clean until we walked down to a secluded section where we found the beach was littered with tar balls and puddles of thick oil. Using a shell, I picked up a tar ball and brought it back to our house,” she explains on her jewelry website.
She and her father decided that the environmental devastation caused by the British Petroleum spill is so colossal it should never be forgotten. Jessica and her father brainstormed ideas of how to create some sort of striking memento and decided to contrast the beauty of fine jewelry with the pollution of the collected oil.
“We got to thinking it would be neat to have a souvenir, basically a relic of an environmental disaster,” said her father, Dent Boykin.
Once she and her father formulated the idea they began tinkering with the material and recruiting the help of friends and professionals. After some trial and error they found a way to extract the oil from the sand by heating the tar balls in the microwave. They then paint the oil into acrylic tear-shaped droplets which they fashion into pendants, earrings and charms. Some of the items also incorporate silver charms and small sea shells.
The response to the jewelry has been overwhelming. Five stores have already expressed interest in carrying Jessica’s line, and The Galleria at the Riverview Hotel in downtown Mobile, Alabama is already carrying a selection of Oil Coast Jewelry.
As she is beginning her freshman year of college this year, Jessica hopes to be able to rely more and more on a staff of jewelry design students. She hopes to use the profits from her business to help pay for her college tuition. More information can be found on Jessica’s website: http://oilcoastjewelry.com.
