My Dark Soul

These are highly personal pieces that I RARELY show to others.

These necklaces were made during a time of my life when I was both incredibly happy yet, inexplicably, also struggling with deep personal issues. I was in the midst of questioning society and its rigid rules; my disenchantment with the consumer culture; and the true meaning of money; all while trying to express myself as a female artisan living in the 21st century.

While questioning the meanings of “worthiness”,”value”, and “price”, I purposely chose to work with the following “worthless” bits and pieces that I found:

• in nature (common pebbles, plant bits, twigs)
• around the house (man-made things such as clothes pin parts, broken furniture bits, beads & bits from old broken jewelry, snaps from old clothes, old shoe polish, old tins of paint).

I also added a few things I bought (although spent next-to-nothing on): cotton string and cords of woven leather hand-made in Africa.

I assembled these necklaces while words such as “angels”, “goddesses”, “female consciousness”, “anima” were floating around my head.

I had decided to use a gray/silver/black palette so as to suggest oxidized sterling silver (which is far more “valuable” than the worth of my chosen materials).

At the time, I was also working on very brightly colored, more “commercially viable” necklaces, made with “valuable” semi-precious stones. Placed side by side, these dark pieces definitely looked like they had been created by a completely different artisan.

So there I had it: the “valuable” necklaces and the “worthless” necklaces. But the question remained if some of them were more important than others.

I still have no answer.

Perhaps I created the sombre dark souls of my brightly dressed sisters?

If you are an artisan/writer/designer, have you ever made two completely different pieces of your art in the same year?

I’d be interested to know! Please share in the comment section below!