I have been quiet for a while.... but busy!

I recently entered these little guys into the Samsung Design Inspire competition and they were chosen as one of the finalists in the Jewellery section   :)

Dis-Armed

I have been creating some friends for this lot above so they will be joining them soon...

Exhibiton For Marking

Last Thursday we set up our Work for the examiners to Mark and here are the photo's.

I had my army men on the left and my Hydrangeas on the right creating a contrast. I had my electroformed Hydrangeas on the wall in safety boxes. The red boxes that the spare key usually goes in for emergancies. To get it out in an emergancy you had to break the glass.) These electroformed hydrangeas are precious and are metaphors for captured moments/ trying to capture memories to make them last, so I found it fitting to have them in these closed off little boxes and the only way to get to these delicate fragile flowers out of these rather heavy and industrial like boxes is to break the glass.

Float away ring

This ring is also a metaphor for the need to capture memories. It shows the feeling of drifting off whilst thinhking of special moments. It is a metaphor for the transient nature of life and the need to make special moments more tangible.

This piece has a special memory that it reminds me of. It was a night in Prague with my family,standing on the bridge looking across the river, watching red balloons with tea lights attached at the bottom of them floating up and away into the dark sky, slowly drifting until we colud not see them any longer. None of us had a camera so all we have left of the night is the memory between the four of us.

Art works

Based on the jewellery that I have made I created two pictures. Both rings in the pictures were metaphors for wanting to capture memories.

This ring captured in this way looks like a still life or a picture in a photo album. The flower which is organic or alive has been captured in a way that has tried to capture the life in it and almost "freeze" it.

Dis-armed soldiers

I decided to subvert my army men and make them a bit humourous by dis-arming them. I gave them a new outlook on life.

Each Army man has a title. The title's are almost like little inspirational sayings for "life"


Keep Memories


Let Love

Aim

Bloom

Find a Friend

Give a little

Live it up

Enjoy the ride

Protect yourself

Throw the line

The display for the Jewellery is art too exhibition

Lighting at the columbo Exhibition

Focus and definitions: part 2

As I have been working on my report I have added to my definitions and to what I am doing as it has become clearer to me.

The last headings I spoke about were:

1. Art jewellery



2. Narrative Jewellery



3. Fragility



4. transience

I now add Metaphor and explain the difference between meatphor and symbolism.

In this exploration I am dealing with my personal ideas and views on the life as I see it which is based on my personal experiences and values which are influenced by my surroundings, my close community and society. These all make up the world around me.

In expressing the above in the form of jewellery I am making my ideas, thoughts and feelings more tangible by using metaphors which help make these concepts and ideas easier to understand. In short I am dealing with:

1. Subject matter: hydrangea flowers and toy soldiers become metaphors for fragility and transience in my work. I use the Hydrangea flower as a metaphor for life which includes the cycles and stages of this flowers life cycle linking it to the human life cycle aswell as focuing on the fragility and impermanence of this flower which holds within it transient value. I have subverted the little ary men and have taken away their weapons and the objects in thier hands that are not symbolic of life but rather destruction and i have given them "friendlier" objects and have "dis-armed" them.



2. Techniques and Materials- Deliberate choices of materials and techniques will add to my concepts of fragility and transience

little soldiers

I am just loving the fun aspect of playing with the little soldiers that I have cast. I am changing their "outlook" on life and getting them to loosen up a little ;)

I have been making and finding objects to fit in their hands to change their original look of being ready for a fight.

Basically I have dis-armed them (not taken their arms off but taken away their weapons).

I have many ideas but have started off with these 2 below:

1. gave him a flower

I gave him a real hydrangea that was cast in metal, the flower looks stiff in metal but there is something about it that still appeals to me. I am going to do somemore with flowers but am going to add colour to them.

The next man needed some protection from the elements outside so i gave him an umbrella:

Metaphor and Symbolism

The difference between a metaphor and symbolism

Metaphor: A comparison between two seemingly different things. It is an implied personal language of expression and is used as a "device of poetic imagination."It is experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another (Lakoff and Johnson 2003:3,5)

In the book Metaphors we live by Lakoff and Johnson, they talk about metaphors being part of our everyday lives. They say that the concepts that cannot be physically seen can be made more tangible or more understandible in the form of metaphors.

Metaphors can also be described as " the application of a name or descriptive term or phrase to an object or actionto which it is imaginatively but not literally applicable" (tulloch 1993:958 "the readers digest oxford complete word finder")

Metaphorical expression differs from a symbolic interpretation because a metaphor is more a personal interpretation of an idea and a symbolic interpretation of a concept is more conventional or unoriginal and has more of a fixed meaning which the general public should be able to interpret.

Symbolism is a fixed idea or a meaningful association with something else. symbolism is an indirect suggestion to express ones ideas. "A symbol not only represents something else but also hints at a missing "something" an invisible part that is needed to achieve complete wholeness." (O'connell and Airey 2007:6 " Signs and Symbols: what they mean and how we use them")

I have found a wonderful jeweller whose works with symbolism of organic jewellery. Her name is Sharon Church and you can look at her work on http://www.sharonshurch.com/. Her works speak of the cycles of life and the process of change that comes with these cycles. I feel that her work speaks of transience in the cycles of life she uses in her jewellery and her organic forms have connotations of fragility held within them.


So I have been very busy working with the hydrangea flower when it is in full bloom, but now as the season for hydrangeas has past, I am taking a look at the hydrangea flowers that have dried out. I want my work to be symbolic of time passing/ different seasons/ changes in a cycle of life/ cycle of life/fragility of the impermanence of time and I am exploring ways to do this using the hydrangea as a metaphor for this. (it sounds long winded but eventually I will be able to phrase it properly)


here is the progress on the hydrangea piece I started for the end of year:

I still need to decide what finish I will do to the flowers. I do like the white look of the flowers and i am thinking of adding colour to a few of them. There are a few options:

• paint


• gold plating


• plastic


• enamel

Fragiltiy

This quote expresses my interpretation of fragility: " Of delicate frame or constitution: delicate, dainty, thin, light, slight" (Tulloch 1993:92) According to Fontanna (1993:104) "Flowers are universal symbols of youth and also vitality, but because of their impermanence they also connote fragility." Fragility can be interpreted as something of transient value.

I have been exploring the following aspects of fragility and its connotations:

1. 
   
   
   Appearance: something that appears delicate such as a delicate translucent porcelein vase



2. 
   
   
   Interaction: something that has to be handled with care such as a new born baby



3. 
   
   
   Impermanence: something that does not last such as a flower bud

Transience

Transience

I foound an essay on Freud's view on transience and it was very interesting! http://www.freuds-requiem.com/excerpt.html

Freud speaks about two views on transience:

1. Pessimistic View: Something that is transient leads to a loss of it's worth




2. Optomistic view: "transient value is scarcity in time. Limitation in the possibility of enjoyment raises the value of enjoyment" (Strachey 2005:1)

According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Transience is " the state or qualtiy of being transient", and further "transient: passing with time;transitory: the transient beauty of youth" (lidia M. Child) (soukanov 1996:1901). I see it as something that is impermanent and something that will change and is not renewable.

In the book that Fontanna Wrote on signs and symbols he talks about flowers being a "universal symbol of youth and vitality , but because of their impermanence they also connote fragility."

little people silhouettes

I started piercing out little people silhouettes and after a discussion about them it ws decided that I should take photo's of all the people I know and cut their silhouette out of silver.



I love the way that not one will ever be the same, every silhouette is different! they little, funny shaped (if you dont realise what they are) and they each have their own character especially to me as I know whose silhouettes they are. I like how they are each different yet look like they belong together! To show that each one is different I could give them each their own pattern but that is still to come!

little people

I have been working with little people for a while but never seem to quite come out the way I expect them to. A group of the little model people melted in the hot silicone mould and then the other group in the cold silicone mould got bubbles and the casts where I cast them straight the plastic residue stayed behind in the investment. I have now decided to try again with these tiny tiny litle ones I found. I have a few ideas for these ones, some in silver some in a painted colour some in gold.....

spring Glamour september

My enamelled colourful necklace was in Glamour right in time for Spring.

Bright Burst

Bright Burst

These piece is a metaphor for a youthful expression of life and it's association with the freshness of spring indicating a colourful stage of life, full of possibilities, can be seen in the flowers that are in full bloom. the hydrangea flower is most colourful when coming into full bloom.. I am using the flower in the way in which Fontanna talks about the flower being a "universal symbol of youth and also vitality, but because of their impermanence they also connote fragility" (1993:104). The stage of life expressed in this neck piece is on that does not last for long and this ties into the transient aspect of my concept.

This technique is so very delicate and fragile that whilst it is being worn the wearer is constantly aware of protecting the neck piece as it is so very fragile, which speaks of the fragility of life and the way in which one needs to guard it and protect it.

This piece was in the Glamour Magazine SA for spring

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

colours

In my explorations to capture the appearence of fragility I found that sterling silver was not the best option for these delicate fragile flowers due of many reasons so I decided to use fine silver because:

1. Fine silver created a soft white when left in the acid whereas sterling silver created a dirty white or a harsh white depending on the state of the acid.
   

Sterling silver links and unpolished white fine silver flowers. The thin burnished edges of the flower allows for a delicate feeling because it shows how thin the flowers are.

To keep the flowers unpolished whilst making the links highly polished I had to protect the flowers surface as seen below. I felt that this black colour was such a contrast to the white flowers. It reminded me of when I was thinking of contrasts and contradictions for example my soldiers and flowers with the contradiction or the contrast being in the subject matter. This time I created a contrast or contradiction using colour.

The black flowers ( a very harsh and un-natural colour for a flower) sharing one necklace with the white soft feeling of the unpolished silver flowers. The pure, uncontaminated, delicate flowers become whiter as the black, dark and harsh flowers move in. It shows dark vs light. The dark being the realisation of the real world around me that is swallowing up my pure, fresh, uncontaminated view I have on life, as I get older and start to understand what is going on around me. The black contradicts the meaning of the flower which is a meatphor for life.

I am wanting to explore making different coloured hydrangeas with different methods. I have tried the enamel which gives beautiful bright colours.