364 Days and a Glimmer of Hope
Unwittingly I began my work for Glimmer in January 2021. After the psychological turbulence of 2020 I decided to create a simple repetitive task that could be completed regardless of what was to happen in 2021. So, the link a day project evolved calmly amidst another year of lock downs and uncertainty.
Honestly 2021 was not my best creative year, I found the uncertainty demotivating and although I turned up in the workshop and kept making it was a struggle, the link a day became a kind of reassurance, a continuum.
I had been investigating wax as a medium, not to carve in the traditional jewellery sense, but to encapsulate and seal objects. A way of preserving the fragile and with it, memories.I have tested the different qualities of various waxes, played with colours and scents and delighted in the effect a wax coating can produce. This was demonstrated in the waxed work ‘The Preservation of Memory’ I produced for Chain Reaction at Nelson Jewellery Week early in 2021. Although the daily links were predominantly sterling silver, paper found its way into the mix, more fragile than metal it was indicative of my mind set that month.
Away from the workshop I was preparing my home for sale and purchasing another, a close friend was fighting a losing battle with cancer and my daughter was pregnant with our first grandchild, wanting me to be present for her home-birth. As fate and lock downs would have it my friend passed away, I was on hand to welcome my granddaughter and then moved house all within 3 weeks…..
It was decided after several Zoom meetings with the HS6 group to have a penultimate exhibition in Wellington early 2022 called Glimmer, a taste of the future final exhibition for HS6 in Auckland.
This January I began joining the 365 links and realised they had to be in chronological order, then I would have a narrative of the year as it unfolded, a diary. My interpretation of glimmer became something highly personal. I marked the passing of my friend and fellow jeweller with a silver domed piece from her workbench (which stayed as she had left it for many months before her family could face clearing it). It sits 17 days into August. Then on August 31 there is a golden link, the day a new life emerged into our family, a Glimmer of Hope in a difficult year.
Putting the links of the previous year together was a varied emotional and physical experience, once completed and sent away to Whirinaki I had a huge sense of relief; 2021 was dissected, put back together, and hung up for all to see.
It looked so quiet zig zagging its way down the lemon-coloured exhibition wall, the shadow it cast became as much a part of the work as the links.
Diary, 364 days and a Glimmer of Hope, paper, wax, sterling silver, wire and gold 3200 x 50 mm, 2021-2022.
I contemplate continually making links and joining them annually to each other and the previous year, the weight, the shape, the colours… This is what we all are, a manifestation of the years, weight, experiences etched on our faces and bodies. Botox can’t erase memory, that always hangs inside us, casting shadows.