INTERVIEW

Looking towards your personal jewellery practice, your work balances between jewellery and sculpture. What is your relationship between jewellery and sculpture and large works as wearable pieces?
As you can probably tell I have not originated from a traditional jewellery background. My first love was painting (which not surprisingly looking at my current practice was on a very big scale !).

Up till 2017 I was still playing separately with painting / textiles / jewellery and photography but interestingly never sculpture. I then discovered art-jewellery – a whole new genre that I had never come across before but absolutely love. This gave me a platform to be able to combine every medium and working practice that I had previously experimented with – in terms of scale – I just can't help working big I suppose. In terms of them being wearable pieces I have a rule that you have to be able to put them on .... this I feel then situates them within Art Jewellery but really that is my only rule in terms of making them into pieces of Jewellery !!.

So in terms of what I create .....

“The stuff that I make is both Jewellery and Sculpture - both to me are equal. It is not my concern which is chosen to describe this stuff that I create ....
The critic or the audience may make that choice'
These parts use a language that is common to both Jewellery and Sculpture .... there is no difference”

What is your intention behind the scale of your jewellery? Is there meaning behind the scale and are they intended as statement pieces?
I absolutely love working large, even my previous paintings were never smaller than 1m square !. I feel at home and happiest when working really big – I've tried working smaller, for example recently when making my brooch pieces ... these annoyed me at the time in terms of their size although I really like them now as finished pieces. Actually, now I think about them I just want to experiment and make new massive versions.

I guess though all my works are statement pieces ... you can't really get away from them not being so and they do make a statement themselves, predominantly about environmental destruction. I always intend my work to instigate conversations ... so when exhibiting and on my web site they are accompanied wherever possible with what I call 'my poetic ramblings' ... some snippets of which I've treated you to in this interview !

There is a very transformative, alchemic element in your use and application of materials in your work. What initially inspired you to apply discarded and found materials into your work?
I moved to Cornwall to complete a MA in Contemporary Visual Art at Falmouth. It was during this period of study and moving to such a beautiful part of the world that really opened my eyes to the environment and what we are doing to it. So much so that as a result my practice changed and I set up 're-dress' ... I became 'Dr Eco Stitch' and ran community workshops where people would bring their treasured textiles and garments that they no longer wore and we then made new pieces of clothing ... Trousers became tops, tops became dresses and so on. When I then first became interested in making jewellery I subsequently did exactly the same thing but by using beads from charity shops along with gifted and treasured bling.

In 2018 courtesy of Cultivator Cornwall I had an amazing mentor Zoe Robertson who worked with me for a year. This really helped me to realise that it was my personal environment of peeling paint, erosion, texture, form and colour that were my strongest inspirations ... out of this realisation came my on-going 'Fragile Earth' body of work. In terms of jewellery I now think of my work as sculpture that is worn on the body as opposed to making pieces of Jewellery ... Depending on how I feel at the time though I'll often refer to them as Art Jewellery or Wearable Sculpture.

Does your surrounding environment have agency over the types of materials found?
My environment totally inspires me – Over the last year and a half it feels like all the individual elements of my creativity and previous inspirations have come together – even as far back as what I was looking at to inspire me during my first fine art degree in 1990!

Peeling paint excites me ....
I am lost in it.
I am mesmerised by its beauty its colour its shape its texture its peely-ness
I can't get away from it ....
I am obsessed by it.

A lot of my work is even created using bits from my actual home
(a 100 year old wooden sailing boat that wonderfully has quite a few bits of rotten wood that we have had to remove…) .....

The stuff that I make is from things that others ....
leave behind, discard or just do not notice.

It is stuff that I find when walking my dogs on Cornish beaches
in Cornish woods
or
in the Cornish boatyard where we live together.

Anything found needs to have either peeling paint on it or is an inspiring structure. I avoid glue like the plague and the only things really bought are recycled copper and solder along with Porcelain paper clay ... I am even going to challenge myself over the next few months to try and work without these elements ... It's exciting to see what might come out of these new experiments.

Anything found needs to have either peeling paint on it or is an inspiring structure. I avoid glue like the plague and the only things really bought are recycled copper and solder along with Porcelain paper clay .... I am even going to challenge myself over the next few months to try and work without these elements .... it's exciting to see what might come out of these new experiments.

What is your view on the contemporary jewellery scene and the balance between fine and precious jewellery vs. abstract and non precious materials in what the future holds for jewellery design?
I love abstract work and non-precious materials ... To me a piece of plastic washed up on a beach is more precious than any diamond ... It has history, a story, it has been places, it has had a previous life and has been used for other things.

To me this use of non-precious materials seems particularly important in this time of eco-disasters and global warming, not to mention the cost to the 3rd world's populations when producing these so called precious materials that we pay so much for.

Quite a few 'open calls' do feature non-traditional materials and art jewellery as a discipline so although it is still a very niche market I am really hoping that it will grow - especially in the UK !

How has your experience been in exhibiting at international jewellery fairs? What parts of exhibiting and taking part in these events have supported your practice?
My art jewellery practice has only developed since June 2018. 2019 was amazing, my work was accepted and shown at Budapest Jewellery Night along with exhibitions in Vienna, Germany, France, London and Plymouth. So far in 2020 and depending on the Covid situation, I have been accepted to show in Romania, Poland and China.

Exhibitions and networking are so important in terms of my practice, which is how Cluster really helped and supported me ..... I was able to network, met some of our international Precious.Collective members who I'd previously only chatted to via social media and also found some exciting new members !.

I love both having my own work in international shows and also personally organising them. Precious.Collective was due to exhibit at 'Athens Jewellery Week' but due to the world locking down it had to be cancelled (hopefully this show will now take place in France in September)

I personally feel that it is so important to raise awareness of art jewellery as an artistic medium to members of the public who may never have experienced it. This is why I feel that it would be amazing to have our own UK based Jewellery Week in whatever form that may now safely be possible.

What does the future hold for your practice / work?
Really I want to carry on with the 3 areas of my practice:
1. Continue to make my large Art Jewellery / wearable sculptures ( I may even go bigger !!)
2. Develop the ceramics side of my work ..... I love working with porcelain paperClay and wanted to make work that was more commercially viable ..... I have discovered that I am able to create work that I still love, work that is very painterly and still quite sculptural, but work that also appeals to a potentially different market than my 'jewellery'
3. Finally to continue to develop the Precious.Collective and organise exhibitions both internationally and in the UK .... whether that be physically or upon a different platform that is more Covid friendly !!