Does My Brooch Look Bob in This?

2018

BROOCH (copper, steel, chocolate foil, pearls, nail varnish, recycled silver)

This piece is the result of my third participation in the Pass It Along project, an exercise in collaborative working in which each participant had to contribute ideas and labour to three pieces by starting a piece sending out a component, working on another's middle stage, and completing a third (this one for me) to keep. I started with components from two other jewellers (a length of oxidised copper chain and some beading). I then removed some of the beading, trashed and fused the chain to itself and painted it with golden nail varnish, added the chocolate foil pendant, mounted it on a rusty can top and set it in biscuit tin as a brooch.

As a third-time participant in the project, I really had the chance to analyse my change in attitude towards this shared mode of production. From a first year working with a chosen group of colleagues and with completed components that did not require manipulation, over the following two years I experimented more with the idea of appropriating the components I received and fitting them more into my own aesthetics, identity and general studio practice. It was really interesting to test my ability to respond and intervene into other people's work and, at the same time, to relinquish control over my own work once it was out of the studio. And, on the same lines, for me it was important to complete pieces in a way that I would enjoy wearing them. Which I have done, and often!

A lot of my research has been about bringing subconscious approaches into the conscious so they could be observed, analysed and possibly repeated. Taking part in this project for three years, it has been invaluable to have the opportunity to explore and analyse over time, and with different groups of people, issues of:

- AUTHORSHIP and IDENTITY: what does it mean to make a piece our own? what would we/others call our / your work? what makes your work yours?

- CONTROL, INTERVENTION and COLLABORATION: how easy is it to let go of our work / ideas? how far are we willing and / or capable of intervening in somebody else's work? how do we feel when people intervene in ours? how do we cope with perceived differences in skillsets and aesthetics?

On another note, when I mounted the brooch, it ended up looking very much like a Bob Ebendorf piece! I laughed as he is a dear friend and mentor, and my work, like that of many others, bears the shared marks of the legacy of his teachings. I showed it to him and we both laughed again at what is authorship and what is copying. The piece is now titled in his homage.