Making and craft are about bodily experiences and engagement. It is my calling as a maker in the 21st century to highlight and emphasise the importance and joy of such experiences for those living in the constraints of a society where the mind is valued significantly higher than the body. Due to this mind-body imbalance time is not allocated for engaging the body. In attempts to widen our social and intellectual networks via technological means, we forfeit immediate, real world exchanges.
Catalysed by the constant presence of technology in my life, I feel uneasy about the resulting loss of immediate connection with the environment. Technology has infiltrated daily life and is becoming increasingly simple to use. “Who even asked if technological gain in one place might not force a loss somewhere else? Who asked if the price was worth it?”[i] Despite the obvious benefits, it is becoming easier for us to retreat further away from the real, physical world. Thus disconnecting ourselves from the environment and the one vehicle that allows our existence in this world – our body.
Metcalf’s essay The Meaning of Making has helped rationalise my love for hand-crafting in this technology-ridden society. “Machine interposition has increased exponentially, until today we have hardly any touching and little real human contact.”[ii] I like that my work is hand-made. I have always felt uncomfortable about using machinery for what I can do myself. Metcalf states of the handcrafted object, “Such marks record the presence of a living person who exists at ‘one degree of separation’ from the user...the craft object (is) a symbol of human presence.”[iii] The same cannot be said of a piece of machinery or machine-made objects, where human interaction is minimal, if necessary at all.
My work does not demerit or elevate the presence of technology in our lives. It encourages interaction between people and their environment. To offer reprise from a lifestyle that struggles to provide time and space for direct engagement. Bourriaud states “Art is a state of encounter,”[iv] I intend my jewellery to be a vehicle to enable experiences and encourage encounters.
My work is inspired by my own experiences with the environment. Drawing visual cues from found objects I create new forms that allude to the environment. Jewellery is more like the real world when it is informed by the real world[v].
In creating tactile objects, thinking becomes a physical process. The process of engaging with the work becomes the analysis and critique, informed by the way pieces physically feel, move, and work.
Therefore the thinking is in the making.
Making is thinking.
[i] Richard E. Cytowic, The Man Who Tasted Shapes (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1998) 37.
[iv] Nicolas Bourriaud, "Relational Form," From Relational Aesthetics (Web, 1998), 11 Sept 2010.
[v] Adapted from Robert Rauschernberg, “Painting is more like the real world if it’s made out of the real world.
“Pop Art – the Art of Popular Culture,” ArtyFactory, (Web, 2000) ,13 Sept 2010.
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