30 • Outlook 2021
Jewelry By Gail sparkles with custom designs and styles by Summer Stevens Gail Kowalski credits the neighborhood bully for her success. She was five years old and she’d come home four days in a row with bumps and bruises. “She was jealous and she was beating the crap out of me,” Kowalski said. Finally, her mother had had enough. She told her daughter that the only way to stop it was to hit her back. And that ended it. “And we became friends,” Kowalski laughed. “But it took my mother saying, ‘You have the power to stop this.’ And I did. It was very empowering.” To make a living as an artist, one has to
Summer Stevens photo
Gail Kowalski at her workbench.
be empowered. “My parents never told me I couldn’t do it,” she said. “It’s the best gift I ever got.” Kowalski’s interest in rocks started in her early years. She recounted her amazement when her neighbors in her native city of Pittsburgh had a load of beautiful shining rocks delivered for their driveway. “I sat in the driveway and picked out my favorites. I called them my lucky bag of rocks.” When her mother discovered the rocks under her bed, she made Kowalski return them. “You can keep your favorites,” the neighbor said. And so her love of stones had begun. The love carried her through college at Siena Heights in Adrian, Michigan. “I enmeshed myself in the fine arts program,” she said. “I loved it.” Though she was successful at various forms of artwork, Kowalski knew jewelry making was her path. “I cannot fathom anything more exciting.” After college she moved to the Outer Banks, which had been her family’s vacation destination since she was eight years old. “It was just love at first experience, for all of us,” she said. “We lived at the beach the whole two weeks we were here.” By ninth
grade, she told her best friend in English class that when she grew up, she would move to Nags Head and open her own store and make jewelry. continues on page 33 Summer Stevens photo
A look inside Jewelry by Gail.
