Lucya Fatima Almeida turned a childhood hobby into a successful career in 1988 when she first established The Tima Collection. Lucya is a multi talented artist, mostly self-taught but did take a part time third year metal working course at George Brown College in 1993. She has shown and sold her work in juried shows all across Canada including the One of A Kind Show. She has also sold work to shops and galleries across Canada, including the Ontario Art Gallery, Rooms Museum, McMichael Gallery and the Royal Canadian Mint gift shops.
She specializes in copper wire jewellery but also uses sheet copper, silver and brass wire and sheet, as well as stones, beads, shells, feathers, pressed flowers, found objects, leather, image transfers and coins. She has an extensive Canadian penny collection and designed a whole collection of penny jewellery for The Royal Canadian Mint in 2019. She carries a whole catalogued collection of ready to use coloured pennies to swap out pennies with a meaningful year for you or a loved one on site. Most of the work is free hand sculpted with half round wire into one of a kind pieces. She also cuts sheet, sands, forges, solders and uses various colouring techniques on metal sheet and coins. Colouring techniques involve torching with heat or various chemical solutions with a resist for contrast. She oxidizes the wire pieces and sands leaving the copper raw, but also lacquers or resins the coloured sheet or coin pieces to keep the colour.
Lucya likes to design pieces that have double functions, like the hand bracelet that can be worn as a necklace when unwrapped, or the penny belt that can be worn as a necklace. Many of her necklaces are designed with a double clasp on the ends so that they can be worn long at 34 inches or doubled up and clasped right onto the piece itself to be worn short at 17 inches. She can also make custom wire rings on site as she carries a whole collection of stones, beads and coins to choose from. She is also a professional musician and designs many pieces that reflect her love of music. She loves to paint, draw and take photographs to use original images in her image transfers onto the jewellery and sells that original art work as well. She makes larger chemical drawings on copper and embellishes with wire sculpting and stones. Lucya has a small music and art gallery space in the Art & Design district in Toronto where she hosts regular live music events and shows and sells her art work. She has a huge price range and a vast collection from doing this for over 30 years! "My mission is to create unique good quality pieces to be worn in the ancient tradition of wearing jewellery as inspiration, protection and healing in times of transition and transformation. I enjoy making work that inspires a heart response from the viewer, making artwork that conveys the beauty of life and nature." The feed back Lucya gets most often is " how refreshingly different". She still absolutely loves what she does after all these years and her hope is that her work reflects this. Lucya has a wide price range from $10 rings to $300 one of a kind jewellery pieces ( average price $40), copper drawings and sculptured form $65 to $900 and original drawings and paintings from $150 to $600. Lucya won for best booth display at The Home County Art & Music Festival in London, Ontario in 2022, because she was abe to give her unique collection a coheisive presentation.
