Kia ora!

It seems March has vanished into thin air and we have landed into April with the start of daylight savings and Autumn settling in. With many commitments, I, unfortunately, have missed making a monthly post, so will endeavour to make up for it here!

Carrying on from a busy time in March, we are now approaching Nelson Jewellery Week, and with it an array of exhibitions, workshops, seminars, and events! Not to mention our exciting Handshake8 Intensive 3-day workshop with the wonderful, Renee Bevan.

NJW is going to have a heady effect…I can tell! Intoxicating with contemporary Jewellery that is!..well mostly 😉 This will be my first time attending NJW. Last year, outside work commitments stood in my way, so I’m thrilled everything has aligned this time around for me to be present and participate in several projects. One of the main events for me will be presenting a passion project with my jewellery friend and colleague, Caroline Thomas with our show Moments of Jewelleryness: Off the Hook. It’ll be a spin-off of our show last year that we had at Toi Pōneke gallery. To have a look at what we are doing and more about the project follow us on Instagram @moments_of_jewelleryness The underlying idea remains the same which can be summed up as…

“Our evolving project explores the mysteries of the creative process, celebrating the idea that inspiration often lurks in the most unlikely places.”  

But, I digress…

It’s time to reflect on Handshake and the workshops we have been attending so far over Zoom with Estela Saez-Vilanova from Catalonia. Haver de!

It’s been fun getting to know Estela and her teaching approach. I have really enjoyed and admired her energy and she always brings us her attention and passion in the sessions she hosts with us. Sometimes we don’t always agree on ideas, but it is most always to a humorous effect.

I’ve quite enjoyed responding to the challenges and the prospect of not knowing what will be coming next with the tasks…  then having the time for us to share and for the group and Estela to respond to our outcomes which always provides new insights and perspectives.

In March we were challenged to develop paper models in response to blind drawings and material exploration, and we are now in the process of refining our chosen paper model ideas and material explorations into more finished objects. I find with the homework assignments I will think about them often and feel slightly anxious about “needing to do my homework” But I really have to get to the point where I commit to hunkering down with it for a long period of time to focus on getting embedded into the task then it can flow. Luckily I’m more of a hermit these days and it can feel like a welcome task on a cosy weekend evening

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I had some enjoyable outcomes from the paper models, though I found it a bit of a frustrating challenge with my chosen material to experiment with which was balsa wood. I felt like I really wanted to try and push the boundaries of transforming its properties and potential as a new material. I probably pushed too hard for that, my results were funny cereal-looking discs and lumps from mixing the finely shaved balsa with PVA glue. I also experimented with texture with gouging, making imprints, and of course my good friend, fire to blacken, though at that stage I chose to pursue the former out of curiosity for the new.

 

So now I’m at the stage of making some more beautiful, “Dreamy” and refined models to present next month. Time again is not great on my side, but I think I can carve out some time to make some models materialise before heading away to Nelson next week. As much as I’m looking forward to moving on from Balsa wood (I hate the way it doesn’t behave like natural wood), I hope to achieve some outcomes that I am pleased with and already have an inkling of something in my mind that they could become. Fingers crossed!!

See you in April!