WORN

A few months ago I wrote about a new experiment I was quietly working on with pumice and glass.

At that point, I had absolutely no idea where it was going. I was mostly enjoying the process of figuring out what would happen when I combined these two very different materials. Well, it turns out it was going somewhere.

This winter I've been slowly developing those experiments into a new body of work called Accretions, and it's now almost finished. The first exhibition of the work will be WORN, a contemporary jewellery exhibition at The Incubator Creative Hub in Tauranga, opening in October as part of the Tauranga Fringe Festival. And I'm really excited about it.

Fridays are for making strange things

One of the things I've been trying to protect in my studio practice is a day each week where I don't make jewellery for orders. Don't get me wrong, I love making your earrings and necklaces. There's something incredibly satisfying about making a piece, packaging it up and knowing it's heading off to someone who has chosen it.

But if I'm always making what needs to be made, there's very little time left for figuring out what I want to make next. So, whenever I can, I keep Fridays for more conceptual work. It's time to experiment, make mistakes and follow an idea down a rabbit hole. 

From pumice...

The original idea came from my fascination with pumice. It's volcanic, incredibly lightweight and full of tiny air pockets, but it's also essentially a type of natural glass, formed when molten rock expands and traps gas during a volcanic eruption. I've been using pieces of pumice as a foundation and building glass onto them.

The process has changed quite a bit since I wrote that first blog post. I originally experimented with pâte de verre, using powdered glass and the kiln to build up the surfaces. I've since moved back to lampworking, using the flame of my blowtorch to apply molten glass directly to the pumice. Lampworking has always been my first love, and I really like the change. Instead of simply coating the stone, I can build the glass up slowly, adding one layer and then another. The glass starts to look as though it is growing out of the pumice.

Some pieces remind me of lichen. Others look like coral, mineral deposits or some strange geological organism that has colonised the surface (to be fair, I've been watching the X-files, so this may be a little fanciful).

Jewellery... but not quite

I've also been making some rather ridiculous glass chains. These are oversized borosilicate glass links, formed individually in the flame and connected into long, slightly impractical chains. I wanted them to retain the language of jewellery while pushing the work towards sculpture. And am playing with small amounts of cubic zirconia and copper leaf. I like the tension between the raw, volcanic pumice and these little flashes of sparkle and preciousness. Why do we decide that one material is valuable and another isn't?

A piece of volcanic rock that has travelled through an eruption is extraordinary, but we don't generally put it in a jewellery box. Add a little sparkle, and suddenly we're talking about preciousness, adornment and value. I think that's where Accretions has ended up. The pieces are still earrings, rings and pendants... things that can be worn. But they're also starting to feel like little artefacts, objects that might have been collected from somewhere rather than made in a studio.

The slow process of building the glass is important too. Each piece records its own making. There are layers, changes in surface, tiny imperfections and moments where the glass behaves in ways I didn't quite expect. There's something quite geological about that.

Almost finished... at least for now

After working on these pieces throughout winter, the body of work is finally starting to feel complete. There are still a few pieces I'm fiddling with, because apparently I can't leave anything alone, but I'm getting to the point where I need to stop experimenting and actually call it finished...

And in case you're wondering, the model is my fantastic nephew Ryan Shaw.