The big yellow taxi drops off artist Brian Crumley in front of Jo's Coffee on South Congress Avenue. From a table, I spot him with his luggage in tow, looking more like a tourist than someone who once called Austin home.

We're both in bad shape: His plane from New York was delayed, causing him to get to Austin at 3 a.m., just a few hours earlier. I had hit the town a little too hard the night before.

We need coffee badly.

"It was a horrible, horrible night," he tells me. "There was some fog in New York. I was coming in at the last minute. I had so much work to do. And I was trying to finish up things and send out some orders."

Crumley, wheeling the large trunk filled with his jewelry, orders an iced chai latte and a blueberry muffin. Ditching the noise and chatter of the weekend early birds at Jo's, we retreat to a quiet table next door at the Hotel San Jos?.

It's time to talk fashion and jewelry. It's time to find out how a fifth-generation Austinite moves to New York with a simple dream: to be a successful artist.

"I'm a folk artist," Crumley, 33, says. "I'm a photographer. I'm a sculptor. I make jewelry. I'm an art director. I've had an art direction company for eight years now. This was my calling to be in New York."

Crumley, whose parents, brother and grandparents still live here, usually returns to Austin during the holiday season. He's back on this particular weekend in October for a trunk show of his jewelry at FactoryPeople.com's pop-up store on South Congress Avenue.

Three years ago, his line, which started with a necklace made from two scarves, was picked up by Barneys New York and sold at Co-Op stores nationwide and in the Co-Op catalog.

Now he sells at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, Fred Seagal in Los Angeles, Colette in Paris and stores in Berlin and Japan. His wares, some of which are sterling silver, sell for $200 to $400. They also can be found on www.crumleynew

york.com.

"I've always had a big drive," says Crumley, who was born in Guam while his father was in the Navy. "I knew the goals I wanted to accomplish weren't going to happen here. I wanted to be involved in fashion and art and creativity. Austin has a lot of creative people, but they're not necessarily working on their creations. Maybe they mix it up on the side and they work."

In New York, Crumley found himself.

He had grown up in the 1980s and '90s only to become a frustrated Austin artist. Crumley, who attended several high schools here, would make clothing and accessories for himself and his friends. As a teenager, he'd go to nightclubs such as Curfew on Sixth Street.

"It was a little rawer and a little less polished than it is now," he says of Austin. "My early teen years, my only outlet was going to night clubs. That was the way I felt I was involved in something other than the standard Austin life. I had a hard teenage time here."

In 1995, he moved to the Big Apple to be a sculptor. New York had other dreams for him to accomplish. And Crumley's r?sum? is a series of intriguing, but connecting, stories about fashion, art and lucky breaks.

"New York is half talent and half drive and attitude," says Crumley, who is self-taught. "If you say you do it, people believe you. I just said I'm an art director. I'm a stylist. I'm this. And then I'd just do it."

Among his numerous gigs, he was a model for fashion photographers Terry Richardson and Steven Klein, who has photographed Brad Pitt and Madonna. ("It was all about my style," Crumley says. "It wasn't necessarily because I'm tall and muscular or anything. At the time I was bleach blond curly hair.")

His jobs included dressing windows at a Diesel store, a two-year stint at Time Out New York magazine as a photo editor, and starting the short-lived underground culture magazine Drop. (The magazine used photos from Richardson and David LaChapelle and had actress Chlo? Sevigny on one of its covers.)

"It was a good magazine for the time," he says. "Now when I look back on it, I'm embarrassed by it, of course. I was a kid and I didn't know what I was doing. It was completely amateur. It was a great experience and it opened my eyes to all of the possibilities of working in New York."

His jewelry collection started after Crumley left the corporate world.

Leaving Time Out in 2003, he took a three-month sabbatical in Europe, carrying with him a backpack, a camera and a necklace he made from two scarves. On the trip, he had an aha moment about his life.

"I realized I moved to New York to be in fashion," Crumley tells me. "Yes, I moved thinking I was going to do sculpture. But it was also my drive for fashion that made me move to New York. I grew up with my own personal style and it was something that came naturally to me."

Back from Europe, he photographed backstage action at Fashion Week, where his necklace garnered plenty of attention.

"Everywhere I was going everyone was freaking out over it and telling me they wanted one," Crumley says.

He first sold them at a New York boutique before going wholesale. Barneys ordered 450 pieces, which Crumley made by hand.

"I work on every piece of my jewelry," he says. "I made every one of those necklaces. Every piece has my hands on it. It's intense."

Being one of thousands of artists to move to New York with big dreams, did he really think it would happen – that he would make it?

His answer is simple. "I always believed it would," he says.

He must go now. The trunk show awaits, and I need more coffee to get through the day.

mharper@statesman.com; 445-3974