Mechanical Rings and Puns
Ideas for the pieces that are visual translations of puns originate from bits of conversations, daydreams, and scenarios. Each piece deals with the misinterpretation of what was intended. To understand the piece as a pun, there must be a change in the comprehension of the communication. A pun involves a much more complex connection of ideas than a straightforward statement. Two or more seemingly unrelated messages must simultaneously be concluded. Other pieces are derived from tongue twisters. The melodic sound and syncopated rhythm become almost hypnotic. The visual images coupled with each word combine into a crazy collage, which, when constructed three dimensionally, results in an unlikely assemblage illustrating the rhyme. These pieces are similar to the ones generated by puns in that they too bring together very different elements into a unified work based on a simple phrase.
I involve the viewer further by designing the pieces to be functional jewelry, mechanical toys and objects. This playful involvement makes the relationship between the wearer and piece more intimate. Rather than respond to the jewelry in traditional terms as symbols for wealth, social status, religious beliefs, etc., the wearer responds on a much more personal level as one might respond to a nostalgic toy. This is the kind of bond I feel with my work and wish to share.
In artwork the success of the message relies heavily on non verbal communication. There is a greater chance that the artwork will be misread than a paragraph written or spoken by the artist about the artwork because what is expressed in the artwork is visual and more ambiguous than a literal or verbal explanation. Rather than try to clarify a single meaning in my work, I choose to deliberately confuse the issue until what is actually comprehended is the humor that can come from misunderstanding.
Wedding Bells Ring Toy
A wedding ring seems like something a jeweler would obviously make, but for ten years the though never crossed my mind until I was invited to participate in a wedding rings show. Continuing to work on a series of ring toys, I made my ring mechanical. The cake layers rotate. Traditional wedding are so ritualistic. Each wedding seems identical to the others. Including as many clichéd images as I could fit, I wanted the ring to look like the bride’s goal, the perfect wedding.
Working without Annette necklace and earrings
This necklace was inspired by a television commercial and a television personality. The commercial for a pain reliever told of the danger of being a skyscraper construction worker with a headache. It was like working without a net. Annette? Why wasn’t Annette at work? Annette to me, a child of the 50’s and 60’s, could only be one person, Annette Funicello of the Mickey Mouse Club. What an innocent time I recall that to be. How safe we felt. Annette was always so calming, how could anyone be afraid? Now if Annette wasn’t there, things may have been different.
Dinah Shore Dinosaur series necklaces
As an artist/teacher I greet a new class of freshman every year. Each year the increasing age difference becomes more apparent to me. They are not getting younger; I am getting older! In this way they are static in time and I am dynamic. Watching my nieces and nephews grow has the reverse effect. I see myself as staying the same while they change. They are dynamic while I am static. In my mind’s eye I am still 25. I know my students would disagree. I am being pushed into the middle-aged group, just where I never thought I would be. How do we convince ourselves that we will be forever young? My students and my nieces and nephews will some day see me as much of a dinosaur as I saw adults when I was a child. My memories are starting to be closer to those of my mother’s than by those of my students’. These memories become cerebral fossils.
One of my cerebral fossils was watching the Dinah Shore talk show when I was home sick from school. I remember how classy, confident and graceful she was. I also remember hearing about the Dinah Shore and Burt Reynolds affair. I was impressed with Dinah Shore. After doing some research, I was even more impressed. She was able to accomplish so much at a time when women struggled to be more than housewives.
Fossils are Mother Nature’s mementos, her memory bytes. Nature’ memories in this case are tangible relics. Our memories are intangible and cerebral. In an effort to make them concrete we document events in photographs or on videotapes. We write diaries. We collect souvenirs. We make artwork.
The cerebral fossils that we carry do have a limited life span unlike the fossils in the rocks that I find. There will be a point when the people who remember Dinah Shore will also be gone. Her mortality will be limited to what is preserved on film and video. We all will become memory fossils for a short period or time. It seems ironic that the flora and fauna that lived millions of years ago leaves a more tangible impression in time than humans.
Tease Pot (2 Cupper) w/Rose’s Hips Teas
This is the first teapot that I’ve made. Although the teapot is a classical form and a traditional object for a metalsmith to produce, somehow I never thought of making one. My work has been small scale; mostly ring size or larger pieces of components of that size. When I was asked to consider doing a teapot, I rejected the idea at first. But it did offer quite a challenge. I love challenges until I notice that I’m in over my head. So I took the bait.
The idea for the Tease Pot came from its purpose - to brew teas. When I changed the plural from teapots to teas-pot, there it was. I wanted to suggested several teases including making the functional nonfunctional. I think the other teases are also obvious. The color was added to remove it further from a traditional teapot look and add to the eroticism.
Pet Reliquaries
Currently I am working on a series of pet reliquaries. The reliquaries are intended to not only honor the animal as a member of the family, but to comfort other family members by representing some of the qualities that might be missed when the animal dies. These qualities include tactile, motion, smell, or sound. As with antique reliquaries, these contain actual hair, nail clippings, or teeth from the pet. Wearing, holding or playing with the reliquaries recalls memories and consoles the family members by stimulating some of the same senses that the pet may have triggered. When we experience the loss of a loved person or animal, how do we fill the void? What is it that we miss? We can replace the pet with another pet, but it is not the same. What made that pet special cannot be duplicated just as one person cannot replace another. For some people, keeping a hair or nail from the pet or ashes of a loved one is a powerful soothing agent. For others it is morbid. They would rather find solace in a photograph, a prayer card or memento from the estate. In either case, many people couple their feelings with tangible objects. These reliquaries combine the preciousness of materials with the preciousness of emotions.