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.

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

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

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anglo gold continued......

Using the three dimensional Hydrangea silver ring as a design start for this bold and sleek category for anglo Gold.

Anglo Gold

There have been many competitions and exhibitions that have been on and i have been adapting my work or adapting the brief to fit into my work.

The first one was anglo plat. Because of the 2 entries required (an accesory and a statement piece) I had to pick wisely the theme so that I could carry on using my hydrangeas in my entries as the hydrangeas are still the area that I am working on in my own work.

I chose dual purpose for a statement piece and I chose accessory for bold and sleek.

For dual purpose I developed on sopmething similar I have designed before but changed it and improved it. It is a neck piece that turns into a hand piece.

here was the process....

Started off with this idea but the flowers needed to wrap more around the hand- needed to be more of a "statement piece"

This was the start of the piece around the neck. Not bold enough!

So i added more layers to it and this fuller feel was more what I was trying to achieve.

This picture below was when I tried to cover the neck more with the links and flowers but I feel the flowers look spare and there is not enough shape to complement the neck line.

I have been enjoying this process of designing by making a prototype and putting it together, then adjusting it etc and taking photo's on ther body to see what it looks like.

hydrangea pendent

I created this pendent and wanted to get a feeling of lots of hydrangea elements forming a circle. Im not completely satisfied with this pendent. I feel that the feeling/ look of it from far is what I wanted to caputre but from close there are many things that i am not satisfied with! some of these things are: 1. The flowers look too bent up or "raw". There needs to be something common running through them, for example a texture or dome the shape of each flower. Chris suggested dome each flower and then ben the petals in their own direction. b) I am not sure about how the flowers are attached to the circle that makes up the pendent.

anyway... I do like the feel of the pendent from far and that is what I am looking for but now I just need to work out how to create that feeling but from close still have the piece looking just as good from far! I think I actually am more fond of the back of the pendent than the front.

I have made a little tube setting for a tiny purple amethyst stone to be sat in the middle of the one flower. I want to take this idea further with incorporating tiny gem stones into my work, similar to my water droplet idea where the little blue topaz cabs i bought and moonstone cabs become water droplets on the leaves and petals I create. Not sure if I showed any photo's of this idea. It was a long time ago so I will have to go find the photos and put them up if I have not put them up long ago.

Glamour May 2011- SA

I was so excited when I found a picture of my bracelet in the glamour magazine for this month. It reminds me about the comments I got form the viewers that interacted with my jewellery when I was at design indaba in march. Most people either said, "so delicate" or "pretty" and about 5 even said " hydrangea's". I also remember a few saying "so feminine". some times after you have worked with piece's of your own jewellery for a long time you not sure how to comment on it or what other people think it looks like, so i was interested to see people's responses.

I called myself my full name Michelle Robyn and left my surname out, but then I was not sure if I should have put my surname instead of full name. I came to the decision that I will stick with michelle Robyn and thank goodness for that because it is all on my business cards that i got printed before design indaba. Anyways was just thinking about it.....

Little cast hydrangeas

I cast these little hydrangeas and am really satisfied with the out come. you might not be able to see the detail from the photo but from up close the detail (the veins and other detail) is very clear. You have to back the flowers up with wax before you cast them!

My hydrangeas and army men met

there was a bit of tension...

I really like the shadows created by the hydrangeas as you can see in the picture above, I could do something with the shapes of that shadow!

Valley of a thousand Hills

I spotted these hydrangeas on the way to lunch at the pot and kettle in valley of a thousand hills.






There were masses of them and the ones I picked were bright purple with blue in them, the flowers were small and waxy which made them easier to cast.

A lady at the design indaba in cape town had a long chat with me about flowers. She was on the flower association board for SA. She did many competitions of flower aranging and knew alot about flowers so I took the opportunity and asked her about the hydrangea flower. She looked at my electroformed hydrangea flowers and told me that she could see that I was picking the flowers too late, as in the middle of the flower there was a point where the little bud use to be. She said the perfect picking time was when the flower had a little ball in the middle of it and the tiny little flower that came out of that ball opened once picked and would fall off when the flower was old and this left a pointed middle behind, like in my electroformed hydrangeas.

Delicate hydrangeas

This ring was the first hydrangea ring I made this year with thin fine silver as the petals.

The flower is made up with 3 parts as you can see and the middle circle gives the flower strength.

I feel this ring has lost its delicacy beacuse:

1) the flowers are soldered together and have become stiff

2) the flowers dont meet in a point at the middle and i feel that this looses the delicacy of the flower as on the reference i am working from each petal is delicately seperate from eachother.

Seperate petals add to the fragile feel of the handling of the flower

I looked at the below references and decided that my hydrangea flowers could feel more delicate if they were made up by seperate thin petals joining at a point in the middle of the flower.

seperate petals

experimenting with thinner petals and making some of them joined and then others attached in the middle... I like the clean white look on the silver from putting it into the acid.

experimentation hydrangeas

Been wanting to try see if i could get the imprint from the actual flower onto the silver- many people have suggested i try it but never got round to doing it so I tried it and it worked really well!
here is a pic of the first hydrangea I created with it.

i think the print is lovely but the petals are too thick and the actual flower is too stiff and hard- not the look I am going for at all! The veins capture the fragility I am wanting but the peatls donot.

Why Hydrangeas- my subject matter

I have been working with Hydrangeas for the last 3 years and using objects and flowers that I have a connection to through memories or experiences. 3 years ago it was my last sister to get marrieds wedding and her main theme was hydrangeas and I held hydrangeas most of the day (my bouquet). From then on I have been experimenting with hydrangeas in my work, colourful ones, delicate ones, big ones, small ones, cast ones, electroformed ones... (There is a lot more to experiment with and find out) but there is something/a few things that create this bond between myself and the hydrangea flower. One of the bonds is the significant memories it holds for me but there is more to this flower that I need to capture, I need to find out what about it keeps me designing and making around it.

there are two main aspects of the hydrangea that intrigue me:
1. its fragility-
a) the way the flower looks
b) how it has to be handled and the conditions it grows in

2.looking at the hydrangea flower as a whole, all the little flowers on the bulb all look the same -until you come down closer and look at each flower individually. Each flower has it's own shaped petals, different amounts of petals ranging from 3 to 6, each petal twists or turns in its own direction.

After speaking with Tony, Chirs and marlene, Tony we came to the conclusion that the way in which I view the Hydrangea flower is a metaphor for something and I need to think about what it is.

In working and caring for my hydrangeas I have found that once you pick them if they are picked too early and it is a hot day they whilt and you cannot even tell what they are a few hours later but if you pick them at an older stage of their life span, they dry out very nicely and keep their shape although their petals become more twisted and they can fold back on each other. They are beautiful whilst they are young and the petals are still alive and colourful as well as soft but when you pick them their beauty changes to a different kind of beauty and they become more fragile in their handling.

For the last year of my Btech I have been trying to capture the hydrangea as it is in real life. So I cast some and electroformed others and tried to make the duplicate of a hydrangea in metal but as if it was real. I enjoyed this process and learning this new technique of electro forming but however I still felt like there was an aspect of the hydrangeas delicacy missing. I felt like I needed to capture the real flower as close as i could in metal because the flower in real life is so beautiful and i needed to capture this beauty. I went through my old journal from last year May 2010 and after casting a whole lot of flowers I wrote a thought or question to myself in my journal and it said "is there beauty in a captured moment or is the beauty lost due to trying to capture it; is it not that the essence of beauty is that it can only be experienced in a moment and cannot be reproduced or easily captured."

This links into my work as I have been using memories in my work and trying to capture moments/feelings from moments in my life. I find when I try to capture and save these moment and feelings I loose part of their beauty whilst trying to do so. This makes me aware of the impermanence of time and the fragility within this. After speaking with marlene and chris the word transience came about.

I would also like to use certain pieces of jewellery or little sculptors I create with my hydrangeas to symbolise the past the present and the future of my life with the realisation that beauty of memories and moments is that they dont last forever but this is what makes them beautiful and worthwhile trying to capture them.

sifted enamels about to go into the kiln

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sifting the enamel

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enamelled hydrangeas

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