A teaser….

A brooch made for the show at Galerie Marzee, due to open 7 November.

Another lockdown for New Zealand started on the 17th of August. I had been sick for two weeks just prior to lockdown and had lost valuable making time. Being stuck at home was no hardship for me in this instance. No contact with others allowed me to focus solely on the work I needed to do for an upcoming show at Galerie Marzee in Nijmegen. I worked hard 7 days a week, frantically trying to get the pieces done in time for shipping around the middle of September.

In the previous year and a half I have experimented a lot with paper; how to create a 3 dimensional form from a single sheet, watercolour, pastel, burning, cutting the surface of the paper, removing layers of paper, cutting over and over until it tears, how to use origami techniques without it looking too much like origami…
I very much enjoy this part of the process. I can play, it flows because there is no expectation and no good outcome required.

Then comes the hard part; making jewellery that sits well on the body. This is where I was at, at the beginning of lockdown. I had one month to produce several quality pieces and had no clue how to solve the technical issues.
The only jewellery I had made from paper by then were 3 large chains. I had sorted the mechanics for those, but I did not want to make more chains, I had had quite enough of making chains at that point!

My experiments were held together with staples, cellotape and glue, looked good from the front but ehmmm… rather ghastly from the back. How was I going to put a pin on a brooch made from a sheet of paper? It was difficult, especially because I wanted to stick with paper and not introduce a different material. It was daunting and stress levels were high because of the short timeframe.

My mentor Manuel told me that these are not PROBLEMS to be solved, but mere solutions that need to be invented. Manuel suggested that I put out the intention that I want to find the solution to these brooch backs and let my subconscious do the work, while at the same time picking up information from other sources such as lighting and bathroom fixtures. I like this idea. Looking at it as a problem becomes a negative mindset. Conscious deliberation may not necessarily produce the best answers. While I can’t force my subconscious to work on a resolution, I can point it towards the solution. And thankfully the answer did come, through a discussion with a non-jeweller friend who mentioned wet paper… there was the aha moment … Paper Mache would do the trick!

Trialled many different versions of using paper mache for my brooch back.. Happy with this end result.