Steve Cox works metal into the proper shape for a piece of jewelry at a shop he has set up inside his Leavenworth home. Cox won the First City Festival art competition in September. Considering

Leavenworth ? Steve Cox isn’t what most people would call a starving artist.

He has a home, complete with a wife and pets, and he even owns his own business.

That business is a handmade jewelry store called Bright Eyes, and usually, it does well enough to keep food on the table for Cox and his wife, Maria. But Cox will be the first to admit that there are times when the couple have been on a strict diet of bologna and water.

“I deal in a luxury item,” Cox said.

When the economy is good, business is good. But when it’s not, Cox said his personal economy suffers as well.

Regardless of the status of his bank account, Cox said that he feels extremely fortunate to be able to make a living out of creating art.

And create he does.

Every day, Cox heads to his basement to cut copper, smash silver and fire finished pieces of finery.

Out of the comfort of his own home, the metalsmith is able to produce necklaces, bracelets, earrings, bowls and wall pieces.

The work is slow – an average necklace takes three days to complete – but that’s because Cox makes everything by hand. From the patterned metal on his bracelets to the chains on his necklaces, Cox said that every inch of his work is created by him personally.

“It all starts as scrap (metal),” he said.

That means that what is now dangling from someone’s ear may once have been a salad fork or a strand of copper wire.

From the scraps, Cox melts the metal into blocks and then cuts, shapes and works the blocks to create whatever comes to mind. Cox stressed that, to him, it is extremely important to continuously try new things and to steer clear of repetition – something that his methods allow him to do quite easily.

“So far, (I have) been able to avoid that,” Cox said. “It’s all one of a kind.”

Because of his work’s originality, Cox said that his displays often draw large crowds at art contests. That was definitely the case at this year’s First City Festival art competition, which featured much of the top artistic talent from the Leavenworth area.

There, Cox beat out approximately 20 competitors, including Roojeanne Hartel and Pat Ann Black – who finished second and third, respectively – and was named the most talented artist of them all.

Cox said his main motivation for entering the contest was to give his work some exposure, and he conceded that he was very surprised to win.

“Considering the competition that was there, I was tickled with the win,” he said.

However, in typical artist fashion, Cox insisted that he still has a lot of room to improve.