Ongoing suite of Modernist-style jewellery made from beach plastic cast in bronze. Some works are modelled after a specific piece of jewellery or after the style of a particular jeweller, others are in homage to styles and movements of the time.
(bronze cast shotgun wad, hand made sterling band)
Bottom row: Bracelet, rings after Betty Cooke. Bronze-cast beach plastic, sterling. 2018
More jewellery after Betty Cooke.
As I was collecting, organizing, and thinking about beach plastic for other projects, the pieces seemed in many ways to be speaking to the aesthetics modernist jewellery, which itself was mimicking utilitarian forms. Beach plastic bits are broken down and rendered unique by their time between being discarded and being re-collected, but their forms still clearly read as mass-produced – full of grids, right angles, perfect concentric circles. Or they read as ancient, melted, or worn.
Developing this series has also lead me to research many studio jewellers from last century, and many of the pieces in the Plastic Brutalism series are created in their styles or as an homage to their practices. Other times my pieces reflect modernist aesthetics more generally, influenced by Brutalism, Minimalism, Art Deco, and early Art Jewellery.
from “17 Rings”, part of The Maker’s Mark exhibition at Burrard Arts Foundation, 2022.
