Concrete and graffiti: grad ring 2012

Convocation seems a long time ago now, my Jewellery + Metals Program class-mates alphabetically woven into the long line of bright smiling faces being ejected from under-graduate life, out into the world. I didn’t graduate with them, but a little piece of me crossed the stage in the very specific form of a grad ring commission...

concrete & graffiti. Sterling silver, quartz. 2012.

I delivered it on the morning of convocation, down in the basement as the grads lined up. We joked: “With this ring, I thee graduate…”. Super-tired from finishing the piece at 3am, and with just a cruel 20 minutes for pictures, it all melted away in the pleasure of watching my friend open the box, sort of squeal (yes, she did), and take out her grad gift to herself, the piece of jewellery that she had chosen to honour her achievement.

concrete & graffiti. Sterling silver, quartz. 2012.

Inspired by the ACAD stairwells, this ring was made from concrete-textured sterling silver, with a minimalist approach to the design: it was all about the form, and intense surface marking. My goal was to design a ring that was reminiscent of the typical hollow North-American grad ring, but to subvert the form, give it a makeover, and most especially figure out how to personalise it to my grad’s predilection for big sumptuous jewellery—setting her choice of an asymmetric, 25 carat, faceted quartz. Yum.

And the graffiti? Future versions will likely sport some enamel, but this ring still had remnants of red sharpie from my technical work on the stone-setting. I really liked the marks, just makes me want to use sharpies on lots of other metal work…

More on the ring design: My solution was a twist on the classic Tiffany modular or slotted card setting, creating 6 prongs to support the stone on 4 of 6 sides. The pavilion (bottom of the stone) has unequal angles on every side too, so each arm of the setting is tailored. I had wanted to work on this style for the longest time - this was my baptism of fire. Loved it.

Comments

narrative jewellery: tales from the toolbox book launch

For every piece of jewellery I make there is a story. It can be simple, just a note on the “why?” that led to the forms and textures, or the feeling that I want to remember. Sometimes the single idea that could become a piece, conceived way before the act of making, can become so over-whelming that I need to write a whole new reality for the jewellery to exist within. That’s how it was for “Pull”, the first piece of jewellery in a body of work that became the ReFind Collection *. It caused me to look at materials in my home, especially the things that were routinely thrown away, very differently. It was like waking up to realize I just hadn’t been paying the right kind of attention to all the “stuff” in other areas of my life; realizing that maybe jewellery could be linked to something as obscure as industrial-scale food-processing and packaging—if I allowed my mind to receive the information, differently. I am very honoured that my necklace has been included in Mark Fenn’s new ...

will you...?

Artists write stories about their work all the time, and the greatest joy is when that story becomes important to another person. This project was about creating a piece of fan-art for a client (DP) based on their love of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter stories. DP approached Jeff de Boer because he needed to commission a very special golden snitch sculpture: the body would become an opening engagement ring-box. DP had a very special proposal in mind, and the snitch was to play a key part. Jeff and I do not usually make snitches. Jeff is a renowned metal artist and teacher, famous for creating armour for cats and mice , and collected world-wide. Jeff also has an ever-increasing body of large-scale public art projects (…with lots of news to come in 2016!). His web-site is a magical place, full of stories made real. I am an emerging metal and clay artist whom Jeff is mentoring - particularly in the skills of chasing and repoussé - and these skills were to be at the core of makin...

Artist talk on March 28, at North Mount Pleasant Art Centre, Calgary.

Excited to share I’ll be presenting an artist talk on March 28, 7pm, at North Mount Pleasant Art Centre, in Calgary. I started clay classes there in 1996, a year after I emigrated from England to Canada—it was that education and community that helped me develop the skills to set up my home studio. I’ll be diving into my process, doing some demos, and generally obsessing about all things clay (with a bit of metal sneaking in). Thank you to the Mount Pleasant Potters' Guild for the invitation--hope to see you there!

metal is clay

Search This Blog