Do you sometimes fall out of love with making?
Do you sometimes avoid your studio … for weeks and weeks (and perhaps months)?
Do you sometimes wonder why you even want to make jewellery?
Do you sometimes think that playing with ideas and drawings is way more fun than actually making at the bench?
Sometimes creativity is an uncooperative playmate.
I’ve been keeping pretty quiet lately … lots of reading and at-home-on-sofa kind of activities. During one of my interwebs reading ramblings, I was led to this interview with gallery owner Elsa Vanier (Paris) on Art Jewelry Forum.
I found this quite thought-provoking: “…over time, the artist must “evolve.” He must propose new things over the years. Sometimes this is made difficult by the price of gold, but it is expected from an artist to have something to say about the world and not repeat himself.“
Perhaps this can be added to debates about the delineation of ‘contemporary jewellery’? Is this part of the difference between an artist jeweller and a manufacturing jeweller? Thoughts?
I’m still thinking through the implications of the above … in the meantime though, I very much like her statement: [Jewellery] “… is deeply human. For me, a piece of jewelry connects to or is a catalyzer for our personality.“
Triangles are so hot right now. Especially brights and neon triangles.
As are chevrons, kind of related to triangles.
That’s cool.
But in noticing this explosion I realise that I don’t like triangles much.
It’s a weird realisation.
I think it’s their pointy bits that feel a bit aggressive, and there’s a tendency for triangles to feel less than relaxed.
Mmm… that’s all I have to say about that.
This is my fourth anniversary of writing this blog, and in a beautiful coincidence this is my 1000th post.
To find a suitable way to celebrate …. mmm ….
false sarsaparilla
false sarsaparilla
When I’m struggling with stifled creativity, I often refer to the ‘muse’ not visiting me. I use the term so often I thought it was time I learnt more about its classical origin.
In Greek mythology there are nine muses, “goddesses of the inspiration of literature, science and the arts“.
According to my favourite knowledge bank: “The Muses, the personification of knowledge and the arts, especially literature, dance and music, are the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory personified). … It was not until Roman times that the following functions were assigned to them, and even then there was some variation in both their names and their attributes.“
They are below (though sometimes are different in various versions):
Roman sarcophagus (2nd century AD, from the Louvre); click on image for original source
However the Romans believed there were only three muses: “The Roman scholar Varro relates that there are only three Muses: one who is born from the movement of water, another who makes sound by striking the air, and a third who is embodied only in the human voice. They were Melete or Practice, Mneme or Memory and Aoide or Song.“
Lots of poetry muses it seems …. do poets need all this inspirational support?
Perhaps poetry was a broad term to include music?
As this site notes: “Dance, poetry, rite, and music seem inseparably associated in the early history of music in ancient Greece“
I must say I’m super-excited to see a muse for astronomy.
Though none for painting? Perhaps it was seen simply as a ‘trade’ at the time?
I do enjoy mythology and such stories …
There have been some funny cartoons about the apparent ‘end of the world’, supposedly predicted by the Mayan Calendar as 21st December 2012 (using current date terminology). Of course, there are many experts indicating we’ve just got the math of the long-count all wrong.
This is one of my favourites.
click on link for original source
A few more on the same theme:
click on image for original source
click on image for original source
For genuine information about the Mayan Calendar system, check out Wiki (of course) … or any other reputed source of academic information.
The calendars themselves are quite beautiful.
media image
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