I made some brooches recently, specifically for the Sup Brooch call out that I was pretty loudly beating the drum about in the usual Deadlines posts. The images selected for the show (as well as the unselected pieces) have gone online and the book of the online exhibition will be published soon. Yup, I’m not in it, and nope, that doesn’t worry me. Once I finished my shoot, at an unnamed South Lake Union office location, I knew that what I had recorded was not what some of my contemporaries were up to, and if it were up to me, I’d have had no choice but to have to go for their images over mine, too. I’m actually more proud of my work (in this case the work is the images) than I expected to be, and seeing the images that made it in, I know why I’m not amongst ’em.
Despite some misgivings about making jewellery for men, again, (this is the 3rd instance in which I’ve made jewellery to this brief and I wonder at it being reductionist as well as an attempt at a panacea for what could be a much more nuanced discussion through jewellery objects, but more on that later…) I took the advice gleaned over a dinner party, the core of which was that jewellery for men must be, at the least, dual-purpose. (Now I’m not sure if the whole conversation was ironic or post ironic, but we were dealing in broad types, if not proper stereotypes, in that discussion.)
Admittedly, I (possibly deliberately) misconstrued the advice, which implied, – or in fact may have even overtly stated – (we were well into the dinner party by the time this discussion was tabled) that men’s jewellery has to be multifunctional with hidden tools, or agendas or a purpose greater than ‘just’ jewellery.
Given my penchant for reused, recycled and generally re-appropriated existing objects, I got to a point early on where I realised that I was going to make tools into jewels. So I found 3 tools for the modern bloke (you know, ones that a soft-handed desk-jockey might actually handle in his day-to-day) and made them into brooches. At first glance you may, well, I’m not going to tell you what you think, but I will end this with saying that I have a bit more to say on this subject, so I’ll be back with Part II as soon as I finish thinking/writing it.
The tools:
