Thursday 27 April 2006

My metalwork + ceramics

I posted some of my old work on Flickr at last. Old pieces that I found photographs of. As I don't have a scanner (well not a working one) I had to snap them with my digi camera, which never looks good, but I did promise quite a few folk that I'd get some of these pieces up for viewing.

All these pieces are from 1992-93. The bowl is raku fired, I wish I had a view from the top where the hole is, that's the nicest part. It's completely black and smooth inside and the outside creamy with lots of cracked texture and at the top the coiled show with very fine sliced lines all round them and brown colouring. I was in my neutral phase with those pieces.

Hanging over the edge is a whale charm made from fused copper and silver. I think there are 9 charms, 3 each attached to 3 blackened silver chains. I was (and still am) very interested in seeds and pods but also in the sea so I studied shells and whales (which in a group make a pod, I like the word play there). I was studying at NSCAD in Canada when I made the charm. I think it was for a project called 'Relics for the Future' which really suited me as I had previously been making pieces that were meant to look as if they had been dug up and were all partially decayed. I love to see wear and tear on things, age can be so beautiful.



The second photo shows a small experimental piece (approx. 15cm) made based on drawings combining shells and pods. I wasn't all that pleased with it so when I did the final larger one I made it without the prongs and had an undulating edge instead (will show that soon I hope).



It's entirely made from scrap copper and the silver wastage (filing, trimmings etc.) from fellow jewellers as it was about that time that I started to become more seriously concerned about the environment. I was really horrified when I realised what terrible damage silver and copper mines do (not to mention gold) and so I decided to try and only work with waste so I would be adding to the demand for such things. I used to absolutely love going to the scrap yard hunting for copper, though I inevitably came back with anything but... I have some very interesting bits of 'things'.

With most of my work I like to work with texture creating most areas in a very rough way and then bringing up a few smaller bits to the smoothest shine. Unfortunately these photos aren't good enough to show this, I need to re-take the items I have when I unpack.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness you are such a girl after my own heart. Your fabulous! I love this stuff. I have some raku clay outside that I have been saving and my pottery wheel has not been used in a while, but maybe now that it is getting sunny!! oooh fun! Can not even wait to see more!!!

Anonymous said...

Your whale piece is to die for. I love it, even the photographs themselves are artistic! I love the stuff, have you been working on stuff recently??

Cally said...

Sadly nothing made recently, doing up the house is driving me crazy as virtually all my tools, materials etc are packed away. It's heartbreaking cause I like to be creating ALL THE TIME but renovations are the pure destruction stage, not my thing at all. But I try to keep in mind the bigger picture, it'll be worth it eventually.

IMEDAGOZE said...

cally, glad that you share a lil bit of yourself and your work here. Now, I know you better! :) Great work!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...