And then more…

Following from yesterday :

1. full metal weaving
2. scroll/poster hanging
3. cut and framed
4. free play and pinned
   ..
   
5. free play, pinned and adorned
   for the ‘Winter Brooches‘ exhibition at Studio 20/17 in 2010; I don’t consider these pieces very successful actually, though I quite like the bar brooch at the bottom of the image
   

   Time: group

   … the ‘Quotes’ group for that exhibition were better in my eyes, as they’re less ponderous and more whimsical

   

   Quotes

6. long weave neckpieces
   for ‘Winter Neckpieces‘ exhibition at Studio 20/17 in 2011; these I love!
   

   For William

   

   For Caroline

7. gem and bezel set
   for ‘Oh Opal!‘ at Redox Gallery (and then Studio 20/17) in 2012; this was the start of a series of experiments with bezel setting; these, being the first experiment, didn’t have perspex on the top … that was to change for future work (to make them more durable)
   

   ‘Oh Opal!’ group

   …which I then extended in the ‘My Australia’ exhibition in 2013

   

   My Australia group

8. simple bezel set
   for ‘The Love of Coffee‘ at Studio 20/17 in 2012
   

   Coffee group

   then for ‘Deck the Walls‘ at Studio 20/17 in 2012; I think they tired of my weaving (and that they didn’t sell; it’s labour intensive and therefore not inexpensive), so this was the last collection of work for this lovely gallery

   

   Summer group

   then cufflinks for Lord Coconut; including a platinum commission

   

   Platinum Commission

   … again though, the bezel setting is similar to the cut-and-frame work; I’m still not quite content with how it seems to be trapping the material, constraining it, making it ‘less’ somehow; pretty clearly I haven’t yet figured out what is actually my problem with it!

I wonder what will happen next.

[no photographs in this post to be reproduced without explicit permission of the author]

Making: fail

I’m a bit annoyed and sad. My life has been so ridiculously busy the last few months, that I have unfortunately had to decline the invitation to contribute pieces to Studio 20/17 ‘Unwrapped‘ exhibition.

Something just had to give… Boo.

I had been playing with making frames which I was going to powdercoat and wrap in woven paper and silver.

photograph used in Zoe Brand guest post; click for her post

I had made earrings where I would usually make only brooches, as I remember that during my visit to Metalab in Sydney in September Nina mentioned that Sydney was more an earring type place than a brooch audience. I was thinking of powdercoating them in a bright yolk yellow, and wrapping around and around in similar colour yellow paper woven with fine silver cloisonné wire in very thin long strips.

The rectangular brooch was going to be a black frame with a single panel:

close up of some new weaving

And the third, slightly wonky brooch, was probably going to be a starkly bright pink – as strong a hue as the yolk yellow – again wound with a long thin (but not as thin as the earring paper) strip of matching paper/silver weave.

They’re still likely to be made, but it feels such a shame I couldn’t get them made in time to join the other artists at Studio 20/17.

My work: ‘Quotes’

After what felt like intense making for the ‘Time‘ series, I felt I needed a counter-balance in making as well as it felt like time to make pieces that weren’t so personal and that someone else may be more inclined to wear. Something lighter and smaller was in order.

'Quotes'; amended copyright notice: not to be reproduced without permission

Little pieces to remember favourite phrases, hand-written on the markers; left to right:

• ‘For Keith: let me walk before they make me run‘ – the gorgeous Keith Richards; black and bronze colours because he’s totally rock and roll
• ‘For Milan: optimism is the opium of the people‘ – from Milan Kundera novel ‘The Joke’; this is a favoured quote of a dear friend of mine, and when I asked him what colours he thought of with this phrase he said greys
• ‘For Anais: life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage‘ – one of my favourites from the writings of Anais Nin; the colours are livelier and gorgeous

As I left Australia before the exhibition ‘Winter Brooches’ opened, as I write this I’m not actually sure which pieces will be shown…

My work: ‘Time: Life’

The third in the series ‘Time‘ I recently made is one that explores my own lifeline and milestones so far. The paper I’ve used is a colour copy of a lung/heart x-ray I recently had – the technician said I had a ‘lovely small heart’, which is apparently good news. I loved the blue hue the copier gave it, and there’s not another paper/text/image in my possession that is more uniquely me than this (maybe my birth certificate, but I liked this much better).

x-ray copy cut into strips

While I would have loved to have used the x-ray transparency itself, when I checked with the hospital I found out that no copies of film are kept, so cutting it up would mean I wouldn’t have the record for comparison to future x-rays. What I did find out though, is that the lovely person I was talking to said that many people send back their x-rays (or sometimes never pick them up) and that these are sometimes available (with confidential information removed) to artists – she was not at all surprised that I wanted to make art from mine!

paper woven and testing out shapes

The length of the woven paper represented my age in years, and then along the length of the strip I made ‘markers’ for milestones, which I handwrote on thin fine silver bezel and folded over. The last marker on the strip is ‘NOW’ – I didn’t want to jinx anything nor suggest that the paper represented all that my life will be.

'Time: Life' (fine silver, paper, stainless steel); amended copyright notice: not to be reproduced without permission

I tried many iterations of the final construction, with wire tests and other frames, but decided on the above form as the free-fall of the curls was appealing.

This is an exhibition piece only: it feels too big to wear, at least I think it’s too big for me to wear (especially in its current format); and I cannot see that anyone else would be interested in wearing my life milestones! That said though, I really enjoyed making this one; especially thinking about the various ways a person’s life can be represented in a traditional timeline (like the ones used for history lectures) – one could use addresses, relationships, hairstyles, etc…

Previous post on ‘Winter Brooches’ work here…