Earth Series

 

When I first started this series a few years ago, I had just started being confronted by how materials and processes, like life, have a powerful way of dictating their own path. Slowly I came to realise that gaining awareness of and respect for that power was the key to becoming the driving force behind my life and my work. Here, the four life elements are brought together: a metal for earth, the fire of a torch, the water of a quenching bowl and the air that binds the process together. Through the application of a high-intensity flame, the surface of the metal is allowed to melt and to be directed by the power of the flame. The metal is then immediately quenched in water to capture a moment in time. Copper – a base metal with already powerful properties – is in this way endowed with a different potential, and taken to a point of no return where it can never revert to its original state nor oxidise. And regardless of the deep knowledge acquired as a maker through focused experimentation and dialogue with this process, there is still no exact measure of how the metal will react to fire, water and air. The scars are then unique: a reminder that change is often a traumatic process, but also what confers new beauty and new life.

 

This body of work started as a vehicle to express, on the one hand, my own struggle between controlling and letting go, and on the other the desire to ground myself - to be my own Earth, a metaphor for building a new life and identity in the pursuit of 'becoming what one might be'. Over the years, it has developed to embody positive change and permanent transformation.