Trivial Trace

 

In our lives, we will leave a lot of traces inadvertently: the traces of pen writing on paper, the traces of ink smearing on rice paper, the clothes we wear are accidentally soiled or scratched, or even some small holes at the contact with body through the time of wearing. These are traces. Some of them will attract everyone’s attention, but some of them are ignored because of their smallness. The starting point of this project is the traces. Trace could be seen as an outcome of the interaction between people and the surroundings. It is a medium connects us with the outside world and a history which is easy to be overlooked so that disappear on someday in the future. Collect these traces and keep them in a way as a jeweler could make new story. Retaining some traces is also retaining the memories related to the traces, which is very meaningful to the individual.

 

At the beginning, I did not limit myself to one specific trace instead of observing the daily life. I try to figure out how these traces are left through various experiments in different media. It could be the common paper in our lives, it could also be some fabric, leather, or directly the clothes we wear. As a jewelry designer, when we work in the studio, it is inevitable that after a busy day of work, we will find injuries or many new marks on the clothes. It may be the scars left by the saw blade, or nails were worn off during sanding, even burning mark caused by the hot copper piece accidentally fell on the clothes. These marks seem to tell the story of what they have experienced. This kind of traceable feeling fascinates me. Based on these traces, I started my creation.

 

The traces on the clothes carry our memories and stories, so they are full of meaning and valuable to the owners, in which many people are unwilling to discard them. Some clothes are very memorable but have been shelved because of some irreparable traces. I want to create a jewelry work based on this. It is good to interact with these traces and change their attributes so that they are no longer just something that everyone wants to avoid but become a new decorative point that emphasizes their own story. There is a certain degree of playability and interactivity in my pieces. I hope that my work is not immutable, but can be combined arbitrarily, and the final form of the work is determined by the wearer. What I create is not a piece of jewelry in the traditional sense. I prefer to treat them as Lego bricks because they share similar characteristics and can be combined randomly under some specific rules. I am the one to make the rules.

 

The function of contemporary jewelry should not still be obstructed in the decoration but pay more attention on the meaning it conveys through work. There is more to discover when once the work is completed.

 

 

 

Sun Rong 2020 Go Through. Brass, Acrylic tube. Image of 3D modelling

 

 

 

Sun Rong, 2020, Go through, brass, 40*40mm

 

 

Dec 15, 2020

Samples of cleaned and uncleaned piece after the sandblaster

Compare the sandblaster and sandpaper

effect after the polishing oil

barrelling

At the final stage to decide what the metal surface I want, here are some samples I have tried: sandbluster,barrelling, polishing with sandpaper and then add the liquid specific for brass. By comparing different effects, I find the barrelling require the metal in high quality and the surface is easy to be oxidized, the same thing with the polishing by hand, the polish oil does not work well. So, the most of final piece are sandblasting.

Dec 4, 2020

   

 

 

Wear on  the clothes:

Nov 27, 2020

Dania Chelminsky

Artist creates various forms of mending to do the response to the damaged wood blocks. All the mending work based on the original forms of wood so that the final forms are totally different. The metal parts could have connections with wood stumps by covering, riveting, surroundings or supporting. This series mending work let me see many possibilities of what metal could do on mending is not limited on the  Ju China and Kintsukuroi.

 

 

This conceptual work gives me many inspiration. The choice of red lines in this piece is from the artist’s experience that making works in textile, it is easy to get hurt and leave the blood stain on clothes. This reminds me that the real experience in daily life may offer us unexpected thinking in the process of making.

 

Maki Okamoto

 

This piece of work share the similar structure of minebut it looks more like a spoon. The bulge part seems to have more meaning in this work. Artist use the antique spoon to create and give them new life. This way diminish the function of object in our daily life and bring a new perspective for us to view the objects surrounding us.

 

Gijs Bakker

 

 

Tiffany Parbs

 

Nov 21, 2020

Different ways of amending on different materials:

On Porcelain or potter:

Ju China

Ju China Restoration starts with cutting the bronze sheet by a pair of traditional specialized scissors into long diamond shape.

Tools used for Ju China

 

Kintsukuroi

The translation from Japanese of Kintsugi or Kintsukuroimeans golden joinery or repair with gold where the gold powder is applied on lacquer. Some refer to it as Kintsugi art with a metaphor of Kintsugi life, re-birth or Wabi-sabi philosophy. This technique transforms broken ceramic or pottery into beautiful art to it’s its new life enhancing the break lines with gold giving the mended broken pottery pleasing and unique presentation.

On Clothes:

Celia Pym

My response to these visual mending :

Nov 15, 2020

	Contemporary Jewlry is “not”Valuable
		A Manifesto for Jewlrydesigners

 

When it comes to jewelry design, the glory of precious metal and the brilliance of gemstones emerge in everyone’s mind. The richness and prosperity seem to be the symbol of jewelry, but contemporary jewelry has broken the stereotype with precious metal as the main body. Contemporary jewelry is an unknown discipline which is difficult to define, to position, even to date. It is these characteristics that make it vulnerable to the whimsicalities of times, and trends in education and cultural politics. The spiritual expression brought by jewelry is much higher than its own as an ornament. Our exploration of jewelry should also break through traditional concepts and raise new questions about materials, forms and meanings.

 

Contemporary jewelry utilizes cheap materials which can be made of rubber, plastic, fabric, or even some useless ready-made products. After abandoning the limitations of materials, the unlimited possibilities of jewelry design are liberated. It is a new form of artistic expression and is no longer limited to fixed forms and expensive materials in the past. Artists can take advantage of this to create many commendable works. A group of contemporary jewelry artists directly responded to precious materials with their works, and by continuously questioning contemporary jewelry, the boundaries of contemporary jewelry were extended. Otto Künzli put the pure gold ball in the black rubber tube. We can only see the raised ball, but we cannot see it is a piece of gold.Since the early work of the ‘New Jewelry’ movement, jewelers have explored the potential and advanced the boundaries of our relationships with objects related to the body. Within the strand of ‘Conceptual Jewelry’ objects have been used to provoke and stimulate reactions from wearers and viewers.

 

Otto Künzli 1980 ‘Gold Makes You Blind’ Armband. Rubber, Gold. Image courtesy of private collector

 

 

When designing, the first consideration is not the issue of materials, but the idea that the artist wants to convey through the work and the story behind the creation. In a special historical environment, like this epidemic, what can jewelry design do? Indeed, in a disaster environment such as an epidemic, some people may question the role played by jewelry design and traditional painting art and musical performance art. Jewelry is a kind of consumption, it is a pursuit of quality of life. It cannot be used as a propaganda in a special period like painting art, nor can it soothe the soul like music. Jewelry is often used as a carrier, an emotional carrier and inheritance, and even symbolizes eternity. Because the intimacy between jewelry and the wearer makes it have a certain degree of privacy, its value sometimes depends on the special meaning for the wearer himself, such as the use of hair in history to make mourning Jewelry. The seemingly worthless hair is a priceless treasure for the wearer. Jewelry such as these are intended to evoke strong emotional responses from those who wear them. The debate on the value of material is meaningless because the value of emotion transcends the secular meaning of material price.

 

In an exhibition of contemporary jewelry Unexpected Pleasure, Cohn looks at how contemporary makers approach their discipline; some are motivated by materials and process, experimenting with what can be achieved, while others deploy jewelry as a social critique, in a variety of ways. (2013) Jewelry can be very personal, it can be a medium through which one can tell a person’s story, memory, life and predictions about the future; jewelry can be about confirming the relationship between self and others and society. Thinking about “value”, whether it is material value, economic value, emotional value or human value, historical value, etc. Jewelry has involved too many elements in its thousands of years of historical development, and has evolved into a special symbol, which is enough to map a society and culture’s perception of “value” in time and space.

Designers express artistic thinking through works, choose materials, and consider attitudes toward society, beliefs, fashion trends, cultural views, customs, and religious ceremonies. This is a “planned expression” activity. The value of contemporary jewelry does not lie in the quality of the materials, but in the creative ideas of the artists. Therefore, when choosing materials, the first consideration is whether the materials can perfectly present the final artistic effect.

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 26, 2020

 

3D models on the Fragments

 

 

Get the contour of the collage and cut the silver plate

In order to make the different pieces at different heights, I used ceramic clay pads to adjust the angle and the height of each piece.

 

use stainless steel to mimic the stapler to combine the laser cutting acrylic sheet

Use different size of  jump rings to do the connections

 

Sewing to do the connection

 

Use the structure of jump ring to combine different shapes based on the fragments

Oct 26, 2020

 

The Trace in Dailylife

 

One paper with ink could not be totally covered by ink, so one paper withe the torn marks could also easy be recognised.

 

Although we don’t know what happened, the answer will be left through carbon paper

 

 

Use different tools to leave marks on paper

 

 

Use black fragments from different magazines to stitch together into a collage

 

 

These two pictures are unique visual effects formed by the mixture of transparent glue and ink

 

 

 

On the same fabric, use different jewellerytools to leave different trace to make the comparison

 

 

Cutting effect on different fabrics

 

Use the jewellerymaking tools to leave specific trace on paper

 

 

See the water ink penetrates through layers of paper and leave different shapes of mark

 

Oct 26, 2020