Category: Jewellery

Beer Jewellery? Yep.

14/11/2016

Barley earrings. Photo buy Suzannah Maree Photography.

Amanda and Steve of Invercargill Brewery are staunch supporters of the Arts in the South. They knew the struggle of being a small, startup business, and they know the joy of bringing something unique and genuine to an appreciative audience.
Invercargill Brewery sells their craft brews, some selected international imports, glassware and merchandise in the Cellar Door shop attached to the on-site brewery on Leet st in Invercargill. They approached me a couple of years ago about creating a line of brewery-themed jewellery to sell to their many international and out-of-town visitors. Thus began a long process with a huge learning curve for my arts practice.

Invercargill Brewery's "Meet the Brewer" event. They host frequent arts and cultural events at the Brewery, including local bands and visual artists.

I had already been thinking of making a line of jewellery that partially outsourced the manufacturing. When I hand make every part of a piece of jewellery, it inevitably takes a long time and needs to be priced accordingly. This was a good opportunity for me to explore having some elements of my work made by some other manufacturing process, and thus make my jewellery more accessible.

Some of the design process in my workbook

When I finally had the design finalised, the biggest problem, among many, was getting someone to laser cut stainless steel. I talked a bunch of different businesses (staying within New Zealand as I wanted to keep it as local as possible) but not many were prepared to make a small run for me. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the galvanised iron crystalline surface that I wanted as the laser cutting couldn't be accurate enough for my design. Eventually I found one that would do the cutting, had a small test run done, then ordered a big batch.

Earring front plate as received from the laser cutter on the left, and after about 10 minutes of work with my needle files and a tiny sawblade.

The earrings picture a head of barley, an ingredient of beer, on a shape a little like a barrel. The pendants show three apples on a branch. I especially like Nally's Cider, a crisp, low-carb cider made from heritage varieties of apple, grown near where I live in Arrowtown.

The teensy tiny nuts and bolts that hold the jewellery together. Matchstick for scale.

I imported some gorgeous miniature nuts and bolts from a model train supply outfit in England, and washers from Australia. They came with their own little wee spanner and socket wrench. using these tiny tools on the tiny nuts and bolts is my favourite part of making up the jewellery.

The back of a pendant and earring, showing how it's held together with the bolts and nuts. The washers turned out to be necessary to stop the nuts sinking into the wood.

I carefully selected and brought in the chain, earring hooks, catches and all the other findings. After a few trial runs and ironing out problems that came up (sounds simple but it took MONTHS) I finally had the jewellery ready to go.

The packaging was another new thing to me. After a whole lot of searching, I found a supplier who could stock me with cards and cellophane bags that fitted my product. Happily, I've been able to use them for my next product that involves an industrial process, this time, 3D printing. I also got some stickers made up especially for this packaging.

As a beautiful finale to the manufacturing stage of the project, my friend Suzannah Maree photographed the jewellery. She had been involved with the finishing and assembling of the jewellery so knew it intimately. Her photos of it are stunning. After being embedded in the problem-solving process for so long, it was wonderfully refreshing to see Suzy's take on my creation. She saw it with fresh eyes, and showed it back to me in these beautiful photographs. Suzannah is an accomplished photographer. I'm especially enjoying her new Instgram page featuring intimate wildlife and nature scenes.

I LOVE Suzy's lens flare in these photos.

The tree setting is perfect.

Oh... that dawn light. Exquisite.

And stones, because everybody likes stones.

More lens flare, because I can't get enough of that lens flare.

Links

Buy the jewellery here.
Check out Invercargill Brewery and their choice brews here.
Suzannah Maree's Website, Facebook Page and primary Instagram.

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Lifting Jewellery!

11/11/2016

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Love to lift?

I love to lift. The heavier, the better.

You'll know that feeling. Sweating, shaking, having almost been beaten by the iron, you walk away victorious. You fought your own weakness and excuses. You showed up and did the work. No matter the numbers on the plates that you lifted, you won.

You know you're stronger than yesterday.

I made this piece about that feeling.

Buy it here.

Because no matter your level of competition, you are always lifting against yourself. It's about what's going on on the inside.

The blacksmith shapes hot metal with hammers on an anvil. I use these tools in my jewellery work to shape my metal, and it is like what we do with our bodies and minds in the gym. Hard work, heat and a certain amount of pain are the tools we use to shape our bodies into the vehicles we want to live in.

This pendant is based on a barbell weight plate. 3D printed in stainless steel, it features the words "INNER STRENGTH" and a barbell on the front, and my insignia of an anvil and two jewellers' hammers on the back. The cord is durable rubber, and the adjustable length toggle and crimps are sterling silver.

As it's costly and time consuming to get these made, and I need to wait for the stainless steel to ship from the US, at this stage I have a very limited amount of Inner Strength necklaces on hand. The best way to get them is to pre-order from my Etsy shop. If you get your order in before the 20th of November I will be able to get it you in time for Christmas.

Making jewellery is my home-based business. Besides helping to support my family, it's how I fund the costs that come with competing at a high level in a minority sport that receives little or no government funding. By purchasing this necklace you are helping me chase my physical limits on the international stage.

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More Wellington (cos I love it)

7/7/2015

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But That Was Ages Ago!

Yeah it totally was. I'm a sloooooow writer but I still wanted to write about it, and this blog post about the Bad As 6 Women's Weightlifting Competition in Wellington was getting way too long. Some more Wellington coolness below.

Quoil Gallery

From Quoil's website, some of their works in the current exhibition 'Matariki' See my pieces? See? See? See? (Shameless self-promotion cos I'm stoked to have these up there, and it's my blog.)

I want to give a shout out to the best Contemporary Jewellery Gallery in Wellington - Quoil Gallery, run by the Aotearoa Jewellery legend Phillipa Gee. On the Friday afternoon on our drifting around Central Wellington I hauled Mel and Veronica in to the Gallery to see where my ambitions lie. They were patient with the little fits of excitement I had with seeing every display box and opening every drawer, full of imaginative pieces of tricks and dreams that percolate out of artist jeweller's studios around New Zealand. I was chuffed to see some of my stone necklaces up in one of the main display boxes.

The Dowse

Loved catching up with my cuz Prue at the Dowse in Lower Hutt on the Sunday after the Bad As 6. Mel, her and I had a hot lemon and ginger drink at the cafe and then immersed ourselves in art. Bronwynne Cornish has a large collection of good natured ceramics on display in Mudlark. We puzzled out the huge folded cardboard Pou (marker post) contemporary Maori artist Reweti Arapere made called Rangimatua, and were humoured by the quirky, wistful works in Cut + Paste: The Practice of Collage.

'Scuse the over-filtering. Something about The Dowse made me feel all Instagrammy.

A figure in Bronwynne Cornish's Mudlark. Brought to you by the Dowse Art Museum and my iPhone.

I have always loved Neil Dawson's sculpture. It looks like what I see in my head.

The Dowse Art Museum is a hero institution to Contemporary Jewellers in New Zealand. The Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa has done their job by collecting and displaying contemporary jewellery, but The Dowse champions it. They have a significant collection of culturally prominent neckwear, much of which is currently on display in The Bold and the Beautiful exhibition.

I almost teared up seeing some of the classic pieces of modern New Zealand Jewellery. These objects are dramatic, engaging artworks by themselves, but have meaning in a much wider context than as art pieces in a museum.

Image guiltily pinched from the Dowse's website. I took some photos but they came out crap. You gotta go see this stuff for yourself.

If New Zealand Contemporary Jewellery was a coastline, these pieces would be the headlands. They jut out as landmarks, significant in the practice of the artists and as cultural markers. When I'm plodding along the beach of my own practice, head down, picking through the sand and pebbles, I look up and recognise this jewellery. I aspire to be as substantial as an artist as the makers of these pieces. Seeing their work gives me hope that I can.

The snuggly living room in our gorgeous little Airbnb homestay, home for three nights. With internet, of course, because we would suffer terribly without it.

CrossFit FRF

It was Queen's Birthday Holiday on the Monday, and we had to be at the airport 11am. CrossFit FRF (Functional Results Fitness) had a class at 9am and are close to the airport so Mel and I packed all our stuff and went. They've got a nice big gym with good facilities. Gerard and Jane were coaching that day. The workout was here on their whiteboard >>

I chose to half-arse the workout - I jogged the runs, swung the kettlebell calmly and my only real effort was doing all the pull up sets unbroken. In hindsight, I would have been better sitting on the mat and mobilising seeing as I was sick, but just couldn't bring myself to miss out. They are a friendly bunch of people with a wide range of fitness levels, but everybody (except me) was going hard out at a level suited for them.

Gerard took us through some stretching and the end of the workout. He was doing a downward-dog stretch with both feet and hands on the ground, and this random wee kid ran up and climbed up onto his back! It was super cute and proof that this is a relaxed, family-friendly environment. People told us afterwards that Gerard often watches the little kids at one end of the gym while parents do the Mums and Bubs classes, and that's why this wee guy thinks that Gerard is a climbing frame!

We took a photo with the CrossFit FRF crew, as CrossFitters do when they are travelling, and the very kind Kirsty (front row, second from right) gave us a ride to the airport on her way home.

Do you love Wellington too? What do you think I should do and see next time I'm there?

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A Pendant for Heather

21/5/2015

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Here is another of my progress photo sets from a special commission I made this last summer. You may have seen some of these photos on my Facebook page, but here they are in one lot, enjoy!

The client, Heather, has three sons whose names start with A, J and K. The brief was to incorporate their initials into a piece of jewellery in a similar style to other pendants I have made, using green stones. Heather had helpfully done some drawings herself so I had a good idea of what she wanted. This was one of my interpretations, getting there but not final form yet.

After a while we both settled on this design, with each letter clearly defined in silver strip. The extra metalwork takes more time and materials, and therefore cost a little more than other designs, but it's well worth it to get exactly what the client wants.

I only started taking photos at this stage in the metal construction. I was using great big chips of solder (bad jeweller) but this surface with the solder puddles will not be visible in the finished piece. Lots of solder in this instance saves the hassle of cooling, inspecting, finding gaps, resoldering etc. until there are no gaps in the solder seams.
It was pretty fiddly getting the letters just right. Teeny tiny faults in the quality of line or shape make the whole thing look awkward, so I took my time getting the shapes perfect.

The metal is all soldered well in place. Here the top surface has been sanded off flat to inspect for faults in the solder joints.

This photo is taken through my jeweller's loupe held right up to the lens of the camera on my iPhone. Here I'm rounding off the ends of the letters ever-so-carefully with the tip of a needle file.

The obsessive part of the process starts. I have a collection of tiny green stones, picked one-by-one out of sand. Here I'm figuring out where to put them in this pendant. The base layer is garnet sand from off the beach at Orepuki. It's mostly black but with some other colours and tiny little natural garnets.

I've poured in the resin and while it's still liquid, I use a saw blade (jeweller's size saw blade, of course) to poke around to release any bubbles and put back any stone or sand that have been disturbed by the resin pour.

After a few days sitting in the warm sunlight on the windowsill in my studio, the resin is set hard. I sand it off flat using wet and dry emery paper with a little water in reducing grades of grit.

Oh dear, a fault has shown up. Even though I had the metal perfect before the stones and resin went in, sanding off the top of the resin takes the metal down a bit further and sometimes irregularities are exposed, such as these. It's annoying, but I keep sanding until it disappears.
The surface is sanded down to 800-grit paper and then polished on the bench polisher. To see what that looks like, go here. (This page I have doesn't let me put videos right in posts yet.)

I have a collection of bigger green stones. Here I'm figuring out which one or ones to put in the gap.

I've chosen stones for the gap and a bigger one for the toggle. Here I'm drilling through a stone underwater, using a diamond drill in the handpiece of my flex-shaft, which is fixed into a drill press. The water is essential for cooling, lubrication and carrying away the ground-up stone.

Check out this amazing stone. It's naturally heart-shaped green argillite with fossil worm casts all through it. I *think* (please let me know if you know more than me) that is from the Permain Brook Street Terrane, laid down as sand and mud 250-280 million years ago. The lighter green streaks are from where ancient worms who had ingested lighter coloured mud pooped it out in the darker green mud before it was metamorphosed into rock.
Carving a hole and groove into an ancient, fossil-bearing stone initially felt sacrilegious. But I've decided that they are better being used in jewellery, even if it means altering them such as I have here. Fossil worm casts in argillite are actually quite common among the beach stones at Orepuki. I have a another couple of stones like this in my collection currently, and I have used a few more in jewellery. They are out in the wide world being loved and appreciated right now, rather than stowed away in a shoebox being too precious to use.

Plaiting the cord, at night, as usual.

Attaching the toggle stone and making a loop in the plaited cord using a technique called "whipping."

The finished pendant, photographed on some of the the concept drawings.

Heather, the client with her new jewellery. She told me she loves everything about it. I love my job. (Photo used with permission)

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My Jewellery on TV! (sorta...)

21/4/2015

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Steve and Amanda Nally own a pioneering craft brewery in Invercargill. I'm not so much of a beer person, but I like what I've tasted of theirs, and I can tell you that their cider is fantastic. And as a bonus it's only 0.5% sugar! Much less sweet than the lolly-water cider brewed by bigger companies and good drinking for athletes.
They have an extra special cider project going on right now, though: they're asking people to bring in their heritage apples for that special taste that old-fashioned apples make when fermented. In around six month's time they will have a limited edition 'Taste of Southland' cider. You can read more about the project on Invercargill Brewery's website.
Even better, Amanda and Steve are active supporters of local artists and craftspeople. In this clip last night that was on Three News, you can see a pendant I made proudly worn by Amanda. It's a one-off design that I made just for her some years ago, based around some paua pearls that Steve had found.

Paua Pearl Pendant: Natural paua pearls, sterling silver, resin and nylon cord.

You can see more one-off commissioned jewellery on my Commissions page, and contact me to talk about getting something special made for you.

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Beer Jewellery? Yep.

Links

Lifting Jewellery!

More Wellington (cos I love it)

But That Was Ages Ago!

Quoil Gallery

The Dowse

CrossFit FRF

A Pendant for Heather

My Jewellery on TV! (sorta...)

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