Hi, welcome to my blog, where I shall be sharing the development of new works and areas of study. Comments and questions are most welcome!
I have just completed Chatelaine:1 and I am just as bemused and fascinated by it as are many people who see it …… Cages are my current theme, together with the power of objects. Combining them both in this way has been a developing journey.
Using the focus of a “Chatelaine’, (a female functional and decorative ’tool belt’ originated in Georgian times) chosen items which reflect the development of woman’s equivalent ‘tools’ have been suspended within a gilded cage, forming a contemporary sculptural Chatelaine.
My family were once Pewter makers in Bewdley (Ingram Pewter) and because of this I collaborated with Bewdley Pewterer Bernice Le Cornu Cantrill to cast specific used and found objects and tools in Pewter and to help me to devise the Chatelaine’s construction.
Chatelaine: 1 explores how the innate power of women as a whole and as individuals, even when empowered as head of a household or an organisation, has been continually constricted and caged. The antiqued mirrored interior of the cage presents both an ‘eternal’ view of the objects that make up the tool kit and the interior of the Chatelaine, plus an ‘eternal’ image of the viewer.
The power of the objects and tools themselves are held within the cage; is this for their own protection or for that of the viewer?
Utilising salvaged objects and personal items, I explore the energy and memory that particular objects hold and emit: the numinous energy held within objects. Chatelaine: 1 is the first of a series of 3 Chatelaine sculptures themed works that contain salvaged and personal objects in a variety of media.Chatelaine:2 is nearly completed – it focuses of the pressures of female outward beauty ….. this time all of the objects are real, one of which is a petrified dragonfly. Photos to come …….