About
I te taha o tōku whaea
Ko Ngāpuhi te iwi
I te taha o tōku matua
Ko Austria tōna ūkaipō
I tipu ake au i Taranaki
E noho nei au i te taha o Whanganui
The story behind the work
Jewellery is about story telling.
The older I get the more aware I am of how influential my maternal grandparents were in shaping the way I think about objects. In different ways their approach to objects was quite sentimental, which is one of the things that draws me to making jewellery.
My grandfather mended things. He was quite a precise maker. He rarely threw anything away, and his carefulness planted the seeds for how I think about objects. Particularly objects we use on a daily basis. A frequently mended laundry basket might seem like an ordinary object, but also spoke volumes about the maintenance and care put into a shared life.
Some of the earliest memories I have of objects relate to my grandmother’s jewellery. Collection is not the right word to describe the eclectic range of objects that occupied her ‘jewellery drawer.’ Some pieces were parts of things, no longer functional as jewellery, but serving the purpose of retaining memories and stories. Jewellery becomes whakamaumahara, memorial, reminder, souvenir, objects for remembering.
Each item had a story, and I developed an awareness that the intrinsic value of the object was in the story or memory it held rather than any monetary value.
Through my grandmother I understood the narrative ability of jewellery. One of the items I remember the most was a pair of small silver tassels that would have once been part of a fob chain. These belonged to a well loved family member who died before I was born. Those tassels stuck in my memory both because they were immensely tactile, which is something I aim for in my own work, and because they summoned such a clear picture of the person who had owned them.
Jewellery can be intensely intimate and meaningful, and the story that goes with an object is as interesting to me as the object itself. I have a family member’s wedding ring, which is a fairly thin, worn band. It is a physically small and quiet object, and whenever I wear it I am powerfully reminded of the intense love in that marriage.
I love the process and mechanics of jewellery making but, for me, a piece of jewellery only really comes alive when it is worn and develops a relationship with its owner.
Jewellery is very specifically worn on the body, and I think of this as imbuing the items with the mauri (life force) of the wearer.
The story doesn’t happen until the piece of jewellery finds a wearer.
The process
I primarily work in silver and gold, adding other materials when they present themselves.
Organic materials like wood, shells and seeds present a different set of challenges. Generally precious metals are consistent and predictable. They provide a framework or base structure for my practice. Other materials allow me to expand and explore ideas. I think of my practice as being like a language or way of communicating. Different materials both increase that visual vocabulary and allow me to experiment in ways that are less predictable.
I think of my practice as asking or responding to a series of questions. The questions are not always specific, and can relate to formal visual aspects, and also to ideas that relate to personal, cultural, and political considerations.
What guides my practice
Mana Motuhake. For me one of the things this means is coming to an understanding where I fit in the continuum of my own whakapapa, and understanding my responsibility to make work in a way that is sustainable and responsible.
I am not interested in a traditional business model of growth. My business will always be just me, making things myself, in my own workshop, by hand. I do occasionally have specific work cast by a firm in Tamaki-makau-rau, and then I finish and assemble this work myself. For me utilising casting needs to be about the suitability of the process to the end piece, rather than about ‘mass production’.
I aim to make jewellery that is wearable and meaningful to the people who wear it. My theory is that jewellery is never quite ‘finished’ until it finds a wearer. People wear jewellery for a range of different reasons, for personal expression, for sentimental reasons, for aesthetics, for political reasons, to send signals, for the simple pleasure of dressing up. I try to make works that can withstand everyday wearing, and which are fit for purpose. In my practice, jewellery belongs on the body. I want the people who own the things I make to wear and enjoy them.
Never underestimate the mood transforming act of adding a big pair of statement earrings to your regular gardening clothes.
My workshop
In 2019 I shifted from a open warehouse style workshop to a smaller more ‘shoplike’ space. My accountant, Prue, suggested I try opening a couple of days as a retail outlet. I was resistant to this at first, as I was fairly used to working in a quiet bubble and opening the workshop once a year for Whanganui artists open studios, or for a brief period in December. Happily, Prue has good instincts and the combination of functional workshop/retail is a good one.
I do not know many jewellers who do not love tools, and one of my personal favourites is hammers. Such a variety of shapes, sizes and purposes! Given my love of this particular tool ‘A Place for Hammers’ was a logical title.
My hours vary, but I am there most week days, and try to be consistently open on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 10–5pm, and Saturday from 10–2pm. If I am at the workshop I am happy for people to pop in for a look, and can also be open by prior arrangement.
