1998 Statement

My most recent work has been developed over a period of two years personal research, carried out in part at the University of Brighton and including a four month exchange to the Rhode Island School of Design's graduate jewellery studio earlier this year.  It explored the integration of computer-aided design into my process of making jewellery.

A unifying trend within Art, Craft and Design over the last forty years has been the slow breakdown of the boundaries between them.

Yet Information Technology, the most important design development this century, is widely regarded with skepticism by the craft fraternity.  Often it is seen as having no place in what is rightly celebrated as a 'hands on' practice. To me this seemed contrary to the liberating modern trend.  Why start building boundaries again?

I wanted to confront this technology and see how it might influence the jewellery I had been designing and making for over ten years. 

I found computer technology to be a piece of versatile equipment whose results, like any tool, depended on understanding and personal application.  It allowed me to explore ideas of interest to me in a fresh and dynamic way.   In particular I found it far quicker to experiment with the visual qualities of both natural and man made patterns on a computer screen than possible on the workbench.  I was particularly impressed with the ability to select specific parts of these images, heighten their qualities or layer them together.

I made images from many sources; including computer drawings, electron microscope pictures, photographic landscapes and portraits.  Alongside these designs and patterns I researched a method to transfer them onto sheet metal through a process called photo etching. 

In the workshop I was keen to develop jewellery that contained characteristics of this whole design approach from computer-aided design to the traditional skills of the craft.  The identity of the subsequent pieces relies on the subtleties of their patterns combined with their individual qualities of natural rhythm and personal memento that shape the objects that they adorn.