As a metalsmith, illustrator, and writer, my practice explores jewelry and masks as vessels for meaning to be emptied and filled by the creator and wearer both physically and metaphorically.
The scrimshaw illustrations in my work question what makes an image specific or universal, what is understood and what is alien. My relationship to these images is built through my drawing and poetry-writing practices. These writings unearth the depths of visual metaphor that I work with to express my joy and frustration at the unknowns of my reality. Cups, hands, insects, rocks, mazes, and drips suggest something held or acts of gain and loss. Processing time and growth through these sequential images, I attempt to understand my own myth in flux.
Images are engraved on mother of pearl, bone and amber or chased in silver. These small vignettes are then riveted or set like stones on intensely fabricated linkages. The materials must be soft enough to engrave, but hard enough to be worn and hold the ink that is rubbed into the designs. Just as these images are held in the matrixes of pearl, bone, and amber–the wearer and creator hold the meanings of these images in the matrixes of themselves. The resulting objects are intimate and precious, illustrated on front and back to entice the wearer and viewer into further examination.
Mesh structures take the appearance of armor linkages, but their designs directly reference Whiting Davis evening bags, another mechanism of holding. Taking the forms of neckpieces, masks, and brooches–the gentle drapery holds the wearer with comfortable weight and makes them into another vessel of meaning in the linkage. Structure, repetition and connectivity build the relationships between illustrations, animating tales of the unknown on the body.