Despite the labels and rumours...

We use labels and categorise things to make sense of them. I guess that is why it is sometimes easier for people to label visual artists with the medium that they work in... she/he paints therefore let's call her/ him a painter...she/he makes clay pots, let's call him/her a potter...she makes jewellery let's label him/her a jeweller.

But we can also use labels to express our identity to others and to begin to tell our stories...

So...

...because it does make a difference in terms of my practice and my identity,  my story...let me begin this story with the following statement... just in case you've have heard otherwise :)...

...I am not a jeweller…

I am a visual artist who makes handcrafted objects to tell stories.  I work with rather than “in” jewellery.

My designs and work are based on a contemporary, visual arts approach rather than traditional silversmithing or goldsmithing approach. Nonetheless, in some of my work I use traditional metal-smithing techniques such as: intricate saw-piercing, cutting, hammering, soldering, forming, cold joining, wax carving, patinas for colouring etc…

But ...

....I also use traditional sewing, knitting and crochet techniques and traditional sculptural techniques and drawing techniques, cooking techniques, performance techniques and...

....okay enough... :) ... I think we get the idea!

...so why work with jewellery?

I use the form of jewellery, adornment and small objects to explore the relationship between memory and identity, and our connections to each other and the world around us.

The world is in a constant state of flux.  In an attempt to take stock and figure out where or who we are, we often turn to the past, to our memories.

My process of making begins with this restlessness, with this symptomatic yearning to gather, recollect intangible and sometimes hallucinatory memories and displaced histories...I want to tell the story...

Memory is a precious but fragile object that we try to hold onto, but that inevitably disintegrates, shifts and changes with every recollection and reconstruction in the present. Memory is connected with concepts of self and identity - something that is fickle, constantly changeable, variable, and to a certain extent unpredictable.

Objects become anchors for memory and identity, giving both tangible, albeit it temporary expression. Jewellery and adornment offers us a way to express our stories and identity. Once the object is viewed by,  passed to,  worn or used by someone else, it takes on additional, new and changed meaning.

My desire to give transient and sometimes intangible memory and transient identity the shape and form of jewellery highlights this tension between fixity and flux.

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