Only a short time left of my Scottish residency. My latest research was at the Highland Museum of Childhood in Strathpeffer and Fort George‘s Highlander’s Military Museum, near Ardersier. To keep my research broad and avoid self-censoring or shutting down new ideas in their infancy, I’ve approached ‘research’ by recording anything that interests me, with the plan to…
Various ideas collected from the surrounds. To stretch out the exploration once back in NZ, there is a book waiting for me, How to Be an Explorer of the World. Speaking to lots of new people, I’ve also collected interesting career options – Maria Maclennan is the first ever forensic jeweller – see her TED talk…
These are all images I took at the remains of several World War II gun emplacements; an Emergency Coastal Defence Battery on the banks of Loch Ewe, Wester Ross in the Scottish Highlands. The view was obviously spectacular, but more so were the colours on the walls inside the gun emplacements. Time, the environment and…
Sometimes you have an idea that you sit with for years and it doesn’t change, it doesn’t diminish in it’s desire to be realised and you still feel excited about it every time you think of it, it could even be the start of a shift in your work, it feels important, but you don’t…
In from the garden and arranging wee potatoes and peas on the kitchen bench? Probably a frustrated jeweller. Within the freedom of not actually making anything, I was interested in the idea that they had to go around the neck – it’s one of the obvious places for jewellery (not veg) but the neck as a…
French chalk – for some inexplicable reason, I could have stared at this piece of chalk for a whole day – it had a lot of what Sarah Read would call ‘jewelleryness’ as did the watering can rose pictured. Hand forged bolt from door with deliberate markings that matched other pieces from the same door…
So my plan was to check the lay of the land and see what the location, available tools and materials and culture, prompts. After a week I’ve taken heaps of images of things that spark my interest for various reasons, from things around the garden to Bass Rock out from Edinburgh. So far there’s no particular…
To facilitate the very necessary ‘loosening up’ process and keep my expectations manageable, I’ve decided to call my 6 weeks in a little shed in Corntown, Scotland, a Research Residency. In addition my (simple…) aim is to produce a small body of work to be exhibited at the second HS3 exhibition at Platina in September. I’ve…
When you’re new back to making after a considerable break initially it’s easy to ‘have fun and be playful’ in the workshop, but now after two years in the HS2 project and part way through another 2 years in HS3, I can feel my process tightening up. It’s less about fun and much more about…
As part of the Objectspace exhibition, there were several pairs of collaborators who participated in the artist’s talk following the opening. Not being a natural public speaker, but recognizing it’s often part of the requirements of an exhibiting maker, I did a short ToastMasters course a couple of years ago. To go from a position…
As well as the catalogue, I also produced a series of 152 sterling silver and steel rings titled The Evolutionary Pinch, based on the opposable finger and thumb (detail pictured). My start point involved an exploration of what makes humans unique within the animal kingdom – namely their ability to use tools to make more tools. As a…
My final collaborators were; Juliet Black, Kirsten Haydon and Mary-Jane Duffy. Juliet is a graphic designer and photographer, we met most days across several weeks to put the catalogue together. The process of crafting how a publication communicates through paper weight and colour, typography, layout, binding, size, color of headings, and length of the publication, print…
My second collaborator was Sondra Bacharach, a Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy Programme at Victoria University whose research is in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Sondra’s speed and ability to make connections between my tangential ideas was a thing of beauty. Our conversations were reciprocally fertile in growing new leads and our mutual admiration for the…
The start point for my collaboration was the title Tool as Jewel, building on previous explorations of utility coupled with economics, the natural environment and the object, it also gave room to extend and translate earlier research into materials, techniques, wearable objects, images and text. It offered a brilliant opportunity to collaborate with several people; two writers,…
Initially I was curious about the relevance of collaboration to my singular and slightly isolated way of making. Through a masterclass with Hilde de Deckers in the early stages of HS3 (images attached) we were all encouraged to broadly explore what collaboration means both individually and as a group and in what form these…
I began the HS2 project in 2014 with the aim of exhibiting as much as possible to accelerate my practice after a hiatus for parenthood. After more exhibitions, masterclasses and jewellery travel opportunities than I could count, I definitely feel accelerated. I determined that I am my first audience, but that I have a real…
As part of the Handshake 3 programme there are 4 exhibitions across the next 2 years. Two revolve around collaborations. The first focuses on the individual collaborative projects organised and driven by each handshaker, to be shown in July at Objectspace in Auckland. The second is a group effort between the handshakers and the London group…
HANDSHAKE 3 