love at first sight

I'm sure it happens all the time to other artists, but this was my first time: I had that instant feeling of "I have to make work for this show".

So I dropped everything, and chased horses.

I had a blissful summer, working away in the basement, and the result is “In Dreams”, a 17-piece installation now on show in the Alberta Craft Council's “Well In Hand” exhibition. This is a multi-artist show in the large, downstairs Feature Gallery space, and there is a really exciting range of scales and themes in the work. Life-sized figurative sculpture, jewellery, artwork for the walls and home, and conceptually-based work: it is clear from the artist's statements that the welfare and protection of the horse in society is on everyone's mind. Very gratifying that we are all, first and foremost, horse-lovers.

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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...

Fresh from the Maker's Dozen: earring show, demos, and classes at Sparrow Artspace, Calgary, November 2024

"Shimmy" post earrings in sterling silver and gold-filled chain. "Concrete & Graffiti Series". Christine Pedersen, 2024. I’m really excited to be part of a jeweller’s artist residency this November, here in Calgary, at Sparrow Artspace. Thirteen local jewellery artists have each made 5 pairs of one of a kind earrings for a gallery show, plus there will be pop-up shows throughout the month with lots more hand-made jewellery, drop-in demos of jewellery-making, and a few community workshops too if you would like to try your hand (stacking rings, dangle earrings). You can find all the details on the group instagram (@makersdozen_yyc) and Facebook pages. “Shimmy” earrings are one of my 5 pairs in the show; I worked with a favourite theme, “Concrete & Graffiti”, named after a large cocktail ring commission I made in 2012, and inspired by the urban landscape: industrial metal, locks, links, chains, and concrete. There’s lots of richly textured silver, stro...

metal is clay

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