Quite a while back I finished working on the objects that I enamelled in Erfurt (earlier posts here and here), the Jewel for a Wall piece. The name reflects that the parts assemble into a single object suitable for display on a wall, while many of the individual components are human-wearable as well as wall-adornable.

Not long after their completion I realised that these would not be what I will exhibit in Heat Exchange 2. These works were conceived quickly to illustrate the potential of using a base shape that when aggregated could become a tessellated  pattern or alternately, used singly or in small groupings as a stand-alone piece. And to illustrate that idea they worked perfectly. However, the evolution of the themes that I’m working with in the rest of my practice has reached a point where the investigations happening in my hand-cut works are becoming bigger, involving objects that take days to cut by hand. I’m at a point where it makes sense to use the laser cutter to do that work for me. So I’m designing a piece that will be cut quickly and enamelled slowly, and be in alignment with the research I have been doing on weapons for those works.

Jewel for a Wall has been instructive, and, like the necklace pieces that I put up here in my last post (which were a trial for what went on to be 3/4’s of a piece with Sean Macmillan called Quatrefoil Quartet), it demonstrates the strategies and processes that the new works will build on.

I’ve vague ideas for what I’m making, and as yet no plan drawing to show you what it will look like, but Jewel for a Wall and the complete Quatrefoil Quartet are the best indicators I have to give you a feel of what my research is pointing towards, and what that might look like.