Kolohe Girl’s Hollywood Glitter Gig

Kolohe Gurl Jewelry designer Renee Roker

Kolohe Gurl Jewelry designer Renee Rokero, based in Kailua, is getting some extra attention these days.

In addition to designing jewelry for hit TV shows such as The Client List and Vampire Diaries, she recently designed 100 Kolohe Gurl Plumeria Necklaces with Freshwater Black Pearls (valued at $75 each) for swag bags at the 2013 Golden Globe Awards.

Rokero was selected as one of 28 designers within The Artisan Group to showcase her work at an exclusive Golden Globes Awards gift lounge. The Artisan Group, for which Rokero is Hawaii’s only representative, is comprised of individuals throughout the globe who are dedicated to creating handmade art for celebrities, as well as for TV shows and movies.

Many of The Artisan Group’s 684 members have other careers that provide a unique community of support for one another. Rokero’s “day job,” for example, is as a marriage counselor for a private practice in downtown Honolulu.

The two jobs might have more in common than you think. As with the jewelry she creates, Rokero uses her skills to transform something, such as a relationship: “A couple comes in and we do a lot of work, a lot of talking, a lot of transforming,” she explained, “and then they get to the place they desire to be.”

Designing jewelry since she was a child growing up with two artistic parents, Rokero said her inspiration comes from shapes, and she likens her creativity to that of a tattoo artist. “An image or a thought will come into my head and I literally kind of do what tattoo artists do: I cut wire, I bend my shape just like a tattoo artist would do, and then I mold it to fit around an ankle, or arm or neck,” she said.

She focuses her creations primarily around flowers, but she’s coming out with a collection that she describes as being “more like fauna.” For more about her, visit kolohegurl.com or facebook.com/kolohegurljewelry.