So I’m working on another exhibition at the moment, for which I’ve produced these sample squares of a new pattern. A friend of mine, the head of jewellery and objects at Slippery Rock University in Pensylvania, Sean Macmillan, got in contact with me to see if I would be interested in collaborating with him for the Co:operation GARNISH exhibition. This show, being curated by Rachel Timmins and Brigitte Martin, is meant to be a collaboration of unlike forces aimed at building links between a fairly disparate jewellery community here in the US. After some initial discussions about our suitability to pair up (we are technically both metalsmiths) we decided that a large-sculpture-making, techno-challenged academic in Slippery Rock and a delicate-jewellery-making, CAD-using, basement-studio-hermit from Australia now living in Seattle was about as different as we needed to be!

Ttrue to my usual method, I got straight into drawing a pattern in Cad, which we had both agreed over a long text-message conversation, needed to be ‘lacy’ (see images). And true to his, Sean soon texted me a mobile-phone image of his hand-built model, a roughly sketched and assembled pattern – in the way of a garment pattern –  made out of used computer-paper and masking-tape.

Cut to a few months later, and here are some images of the sample squares of pattern that I’ve had cut, checked out and then sent off to Sean to play with. (Notice the miscommunication with the laser-cutters resulted in the lead-ins being on the wrong side of the line – we’re after the sheet more than the ‘drop-outs’ in this instance as that’s what Sean will work with.)