Further to the last post, more on my new passion: making jewellery that is but isn’t jewellery, its just…what I’m making, and if I concentrate really hard through squinty eyes, I think there’s a case for calling it relief sculpture. The base is the person.

My work has always been about layering symbols & images, where meaning is found in the interplay. I imagine them having a conversation.

I think of it as a visual vocabulary for an imaginary dialogue, from which any number of conclusions or arguments can be drawn, through each viewer's own prism. So I put individually meaningful things together to find the tension & balance, colour & scale, to bring about a playoff. Like a quest, to go where the greater meaning buzzes, in the middle & around the outside.

A few objects within my current gaze are grouped together in ‘charm’ necklaces, a few of which I’ll mention here.

I feel some ownership over the Venus of Willendorf for a few reasons, not the least for the fact that she has come down the line, from one woman to the next, for 35000 years, even though she spent most of that time sleeping beneath the soil. "There is something so comforting and joyous about prehistoric figurines depicting women, so welcoming in the abundance of their forms, so calm and unwavering in their regard. This is a woman, it seems to say, she is soft and round, her breasts are large, her hips full, her kneecaps prominent"*. I remember pregnancy. Our bodies change so much as we cycle through. This is a real and live and direct connection and I'm so proud of us all because for a lot of the time its really hard.

This figure brings a kind of conceptual weight but I think one thing is never made alone. I never make one thing alone. She wouldn’t mean all the things I want to say, on her own. And I’m just getting started, I have this thrilling feeling that there’s so much more to come

Juxtapose this with the vintage luxury fashion button found on Etsy, from the premier fashion brand of the last century. It holds a standard by which others are measured, but few of us fit. It is extremely covetable, like an aspirational talisman and the ultimate harbinger of style. Its a “cant go wrong” and “have to have”.

But the motherload of pop-cultural artistic weight falls to the inscrutable Mona Lisa. Known and unknown, unknowing and knows everything. Made by a man. Oddly, I always come back to that

From antiquity, a gilded scarab, representing transformation, renewal & resurrection. The original scarab I bought in Cairo from which this piece was cast, was inscribed on the reverse : "beautiful beautiful love me forever". That’s a sentiment to keep forever

A Quatrefoil or "heartsease" symbol, represents wholeness, union and comfort, where the heart shall be eased; cross cultural amulets of love, constancy & protection. More of my Heartsease/quatrefoils here

Decorative details are an integral part of all the work. Everything links together.

And I like the term “charms”, when it comes to jewellery, describing discreet items, literally symbols designed to be grouped. EXACTLY WHAT I DO.

And now, I have this thrilling feeling that theres so much more to come & I haven’t had this feeling so keenly for a while. And its all so gorgeous!

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