Notes from communication with Monika Brugger May 7th, 2020
About the Kauri Gum bead neckalce:
This she found the most interesting, I agree. She can interpret this one. It describes a cycle with many readings. Something everyone can relate too finding different interpretations. A familiarity from the unconscious. Its non-pretentious, it does not need much. I need to take care of the simple arrangement, of its natural simplicity. Be inspired by tradition. It talks about a slow degradation. Bring forth more darkness, make a point by staging the darkness on this cycle. Elevate the bad side, not only the good and the beauty.
Try perhaps an interim element between each bead to bring back the knot, to signify the knot, the passed reading of a pearl necklace knot after knot.
Research black used for mourning, or 18th century pearl necklaces that where tied up with ribbons, study these clasping mechanisms.
About the Shell exercise:
That these are too obvious, too immediately jewellery, to try another way to bring them together that is not embedding them in resin, to try sewing them together, or experiment with other dimensions of the form and shape, or colour or materials. Don’t go to the obvious choices.
Do not think jewellery then come back to jewellery later. Draw them cut them in half, deconstruct, reconstruct. Nature is intending something with these? What is the message, what is the idea to pursuit?
-Are they in danger? Is it the shine? Is it the collecting aspect, is it the experience of picking up? Is it the sorting and the mounting of them? What do these bunch of shells mean to me? I picked these up with Fran in Oneroa, they are loaded with Fran, they are Fran in a sunny day. Think more, go deeper.
Some brainstorming, and suggestions for the display of an end of year show.
She states that Handshake is an experience, of growth and communication. Of growing up as an artist and a human, about learning to communicate with your art and your peers, in all the possible ways.
The manifests that interviews are what she has been working with in her student shows and is a strategy that works, like handshake works too.
Interviews, and work in response to questions asked and answered to deal with ideas that are not always easily conveyed in the world of Art and Jewellery. Mundane or intimate questions that lead to real life answers, that let you see inside the artists life. With a bit of humour, of being human.
This evidences that everyone is always looking for answers. That everyone always has questions. Mentor to mentee, mentee to mentee, mentor to mentor. Communication passes on.
We are handshaking, we are all doing the thing.
This helps people get out of their comfort zone, get closer to the people they dream about, and doing the things they dream of doing. It normalizes the abnormal, it simplifies the confusing. It demystifies the process, for the viewer of the show, for the artists, for the mentors.