‘Adorn’ Exhibition

The jewellery exhibition ‘Adorn‘ opens at The Court Cupboard Gallery in Abergavenny today.
It displays the work of seven jewellers including myself. The wide range of work demonstrates the disparate nature of contemporary jewellery today. The images below show some of my work that is on display there.

I am also currently showing work at Queen Street Gallery in Neath as part of its first exhibition. It features work by new and established artists – there’s paintings, prints, ceramics, textiles, sculpture, jewellery and more. The exhibition runs until July 28th.

My work is also still available at The Craft Centre and Design Gallery in Leeds. It’s a wonderful gallery and they have an absolutely fantastic range of jewellery and ceramics!

Stepwells Body Piece

This body piece was a pain to make! These photos are from before I oxidised the components, making them black, when I was working out how to wire the whole thing.The shapes I have used are based on the Stepwells of India.

There are no photos of the front of the body piece at this stage as it was actually taped on with masking tape!
What is sad is that to get the piece done in time for our exhibition I had to re-wire it directly onto my mannequin… meaning if I ever want to remove it or use the mannequin for something else I will have to cut the wires! I have plans to try to save it though.This piece was actually very interesting when left with its natural copper colour. It almost becomes part of the skin.

I wont be posting again in a while as I am away on holiday. However, when I am back I plan to post some more of the work leading up to this piece.

End of Year 2!

I have finally come to the end of my second year. You can probably tell it was incredibly busy and stressful by the slowness of my posts.

Since Christmas I have done work experience at 3 different placements, I have helped curate my class’s exhibition and I made a body jewellery piece, that went into that exhibition, which I am very pleased with. For that final project I received 68 – a strong 2:1.

Here is me with my work at our ‘MidPoint’ exhibition:

To see more from this exhibition go to my dad’s blog here:
https://stillwalks.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/degree-shows-a-week-of-art/

(You can also see some of the work from Hereford’s degree show on his blog here:
https://stillwalks.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/hereford-degree-shows/)

I do intend to post more myself but I am going away in 2 days and won’t be able to post in a while. I may try to schedule a couple of posts before then.

The photos in this post were taken by Claire Smout:
https://www.facebook.com/clairesmoutphotography?fref=photo

Now or Never

I think it’s a case of now or never with this post! I finished this project quite a while ago now and another deadline has come and gone without me posting any finished pieces.

So here we go:In the end I made both objects and jewellery (there are two other pieces than these but I feel these are the most successful).I am really pleased with these but working out the best way to make them was hell! If I’d had the time I would have liked to make more varied ‘corridors’ with steeper curves and different lengths of edges. I was also planning on blackening the insides of some.This is one of the necklaces, however it’s actually inspired by the bricks of MIMA rather than corridors. It’s simple but effective and I rather like wearing it myself.
After a very stressful finish to this project I managed to scrape a first! Woo!

Anyway, I’m off to Paris for a few days. I will try to be less useless once I’m back and post some examples from my Metal Folds project which finished earlier this week and will hopefully have my results for it as soon as I’m home.

Paper Jewellery

I decided not to use the optical illusion work as I prefer the subtlety of the previous work. However, I was still not sure exactly what I was making, at the time they were just art objects. I questioned myself on whether they needed to be something more. To work out if these little corridors could become jewellery I tried out some of my favourite paper pieces on chains as necklaces.The small ones are quite sweet, they could make interesting beads.I tried playing around with the positioning of the paper corridors on the chain, looking at how they might sit on the body. I felt that some of the pieces were a bit to large to be worn this way, they didn’t look quite right. Also, whilst they are in paper and therefore quite light, if I was to translate them into metal they may be a bit too heavy to be comfortable to wear. This one was particularly interesting with its steep curve and point. It works quite well as an asymmetrical neck piece. After doing this I definitely think that some of the smaller ‘corridors’ could work very well as metal neck pieces, however, I am still interested in making some of the larger ones into art objects which are meant to be held, looked at and looked through.

Optical Illusions

Another idea I played with during my Gallery project was that of optical illusions. This was inspired by the illusions which can be seen in MIMA’s cafe. See the photos my dad took of these illusions here.I tried to incorporate the illusion of a circle within my corridor forms, although those forms became pyramids as I closed off the narrow end. I started by drawing the circles, working out how to change the curves to create the illusions, by eye.Soon after, I worked out how to create a net pattern on Photoshop to get a more accurate circle. Once I had this figured out I was able to change the shape and positioning of the illusion.

Oval:Off-centre circle:However, I then wanted to incorporate the earlier idea of curving one of the edges of the form but this proved much more difficult. I simply couldn’t work out how to alter the circle’s curves to accommodate for the curved edge and still create a perfect illusion of a circle. I attempted drawing it by hand (below) but gave up all together on Photoshop.Another aspect of these objects which proved tricky was photographing, or even seeing, the illusions. You have probably noticed that the illusions don’t actually seem to work in any of these photos but I promise that it is because they don’t photograph well. If you were to see them in reality you’d be able to tell that they do work, well, they do as long as you squint or hold them at a distance… haha. Maybe I’ve just been looking at them for too long!

Image and Reflection

My most recent project – the gallery one – actually came to an end over a week ago and I have even had my mark back awhile.

However, I have only done 2 posts about this project so far. Which is a pity as I have been really pleased with the work I have produced and the ideas I have been working with. Therefore, I am not going to post photos of my final work or tell you what mark I got just yet. I hope to post some more work that led to the projects conclusion first.

So, here are some more images of the paper pieces I made, experimenting with pattern and surfaces.
These were done using printed photos of the Mission’s interior. I like the subtle colour changes and how the folds change the intersecting lines of the images.
I then bought some Silver card (or mirror paper) to create reflections inside these corridor forms.I tried changing aspects to see how this changed the reflections. In this next one I used the mirror paper on only one side whilst colouring in the opposite section. This created the appearance of an extra two sides or, as I see it, a path.
Finally, I tried cutting out windows. This created a repeat pattern and obviously allowed more light inside the ‘corridor’.

Happy New Year

Well Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a great night last night as well as a fantastic Christmas.These are pictures of another of my paper ‘corridors’. Again it is inspired by John Pym’s installation “Penumbra” but with this one I have also focused on the iconic windows of Mission Gallery. These ‘corridors’ are great for looking at from various angles, changing the perspective alters how they appear quite a lot. I particularly like this one, I’m not sure why, but at least a part of it is the use of black paper. Although it is all black the windows allowing light through still create different shades and depth.

Rocky Patterns and Etched Brass

I’ve been very busy since returning from Scotland. So I am very sorry for taking so long to post again.

Whilst in Scotland I collected rocks which interested me and I have done drawings of the patterns in the rocks. I am hoping to use these patterns within the necklace design I have been working on (which I will show you in the next post).

I haven’t decided what material I am going to make my necklace out of yet however there are many ways in which I can apply these patterns. One way is to etch it onto metal.

I chose one of my drawings to etch. I repeated and flipped the pattern and printed it onto acetate to transfer it onto the metal which was then placed into acid. This etched the pattern into the metal. I chose brass because it looks good with wood which I am considering combining it with.

This was quite a large design so it hasn’t etched very deep. However it is still quite effective, especially when the light catches the pattern.

Paper Landscapes

ALL of these photos are of the same piece of paper – smaller than A4!
It is fascinating how different it appears when photographed from different angles – sometimes as zigzagging steps or as dramatic geometrical drawings or even sometimes as little landscapes, like sand dunes.