Christmas Art

I found some images of Christmas art work while clearing up desktop. So I thought I would post them... a little later than expected. The first image is a brooch I made for a present: an ammonite, freshwater pearl, coral heart and knitting needle. The chicken Christmas decoration design was made for a few friends hand sawed form copper sheet. I managed to make 12 of these with help from my other half while juggling a busy end of term at school. He also made these lovely hand printed woodcut Christmas cards. xxx

Sending off..

One of my favourite brooches all packaged up for a new owner... ill miss this one. It was made a while ago from a story about writing lines and trying to do it quicker by tying three pens together. 

A year or two later...

Commissioned necklace, silver fern and amber necklace with detachable silver bee orchid and pearl brooch.

Art class paint brush brooch.

Commissioned bed sheet bangle made in a larger size.

So its been a year or two... I have been hiding away busying myself with learning to teach art and teaching. Here are a few things I have enjoyed making in holidays and weekends. Jewellery making has had to be put on hold at times within the busyness of school life. Hopefully will be updating more frequently.

Looking back.

Looking back through my camera from about two or three months ago made me realise how behind I was in my blogging. This is not really that recent work, but work I completed for a couple of exhibitions that are finished now, I'm guessing pre-exhibition life was too busy for blogging time so I'm finally getting round to it now. Probably the most out of the ordinary piece is the copper bookmark, this one was a present for a friend. The idea to make a bookmark only came after I was asked to contribute one as part of a gift. I think its a great idea to make use of these old bits of copper that I never seem to use.

The idea to make a patch brooch came when I asked for old dust sheets to do some painting with and I was given a range of old bedsheets and blankets from the school boarding house. They were really very beautiful, I remember spending most of an afternoon, cutting all the patches and embroidered details out and putting them in my sketch book.

The white poppy button hole brooch, was influenced by the Quaker believes. Quakers tend to opt for the white poppy for armistice day as oppose to the red one commonly worn, as a symbol for supporting peace instead of war. Onto the poppy flower I etched a quote from Quaker Faith and Practice (24.04):

All bloody principles and practices we do utterly

deny, with all outward weapons, for any end, or

under any pretence whatsoever, and this is our

testimony to the whole world.

Dress making brooch.

There are moments when being in this school that I think of the hundreds of people that have past through the doors and used the same space as we do now. I looked at three video recordings of the school in the 1963, which can be seen on You Tube. It gives a factual account of the daily school life at that time, from waking in the morning, eating rituals, lessons and games etc. One thing that struck me is the huge change from today's school curriculum, in that the lives of the boys and girls were remarkabley different. The idea of having woodwork classes for the boys and dressmaking classes for the girls would horrify most of us now. Looking into the earlier documentation about the school, there is far less written about the girls compared to the boys. They seem to be tolerated but shunned to the background by the much louder boys, another change to now-a-days I suppose. So I thought I would make a Dressmaking brooch for them really, to illustrate this a quite, studious and creative activity. The idea of making a brooch encorperating scissors has been in my mind for a while now, almost two years, so I am glad to have finally completed this one. What took so long was trying o find a suitable pair of scissors, I found these ones hiding in a market in Islington just before Christmas.

Things so far...

Its been roughly three weeks into the new spring term, however school days seem far from the optimism of spring with dark mornings and even darker nights. However things in the art department have been rather colourful over the last three busy weeks. These photos show a range of work from opal fruit wrapper bracelets made by my jewellery club, a rather large pharaoh in the making for the school adaptation of Josephs Technicolour Dreamcoat, my Junior school art club drawings and some of my own jewellery I'm working on at the moment. Working here has definitely improved my skills at multi tasking! We also had a visit from Nick Denchfield, an amazingly talented paper engineer. He creates magnificent pop-up books from stories like Cinderella and the nutcracker, sometimes where the whole book turns into one hugely intricate and fascinating pop up sculpture! He did a workshop in the school, enabling students to create their own pop-up sculpture. His work is definitely worth checking out! looking back on the last few weeks wihle sitting in the quite of the school library, I look forward to the next week and what it will hold, I never quite know.

Monday Morning.

Its Monday morning once again. With the Christmas decorations finally up in the dining hall and the arrival of a new set of soldering tweezers and flux, I feel like I can get back to making jewellery. I am looking forward to starting a few Christmas commissions that I have had to put on hold over last few weeks. Although the Christmas decorations are a big job and a lot of responsibly, as they fill a space used by the the whole school everyday, I do enjoy the challenge. It is especially nice to see all the children, who helped with the painting, proud of their work hanging up and bringing a festive feel into the school.