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I make things so I can see and feel them.
The tactile quality of working and experimenting is important to me. I get involved in process, enjoying how it slows my thinking, and look for that moment of clarity where something feels right.
My background is a rural upbringing in Central Otago, New Zealand. Childhood memories are of landscape (large and small), fences (scrambled through or over), grasses, leaves and trees with orche tones, natural textures and other patterns from the environment. As an adult these experiences still resonate with me.
‘Pakeha New Zealanders tend to have a strong, if mythic, connection to … rural society or imagined versions of it, and (perhaps contradictorily) to an unspoilt landscape.’*
I work a lot with synthetic materials because they are part of a landscape we often forget. They are fabricated by us and the world is flooded by them, altered even. I wonder what stories they tell of us now and in time to come?
My projects are a slow and steady progression. I am interested in the power that jewellery has to talk about identity and I am questioning myself – working to see and understand the things that have shaped where I am.
*(J. Belich, L. Weavers (2008). Understanding New Zealand Cultural Identities)
Selected recent works:
2016 – Drift works
Drifting – breaking – accumulating – Transformation – seduction – lie – tactile – natural worlds – artificial worlds – order – offcut – complicit relationship – imitation – material world –
2015 – Black works
Black – charred – mourning – loss – seduction – lie – tactile – material – weight – transformation – manipulation – rhythm – texture – slick – shiny – oilspill – seduction
2015 – Metal works
Manmade – bits – bobs – broken pieces – cast off – waiting – useful – useless – potential unknown – accumulating – decorating.
My most memorable encounter with metal is not in jewellery, but in my fathers workshop.
HANDSHAKE 3 