Walking the Gray Area

Hi Leonor,

Sorry my last entry was so brief, trying to follow the blog a bit better now and I’d like to learn more about your work and ideas. I’ve enjoyed seeing the range of things posted by you and others thus far.

As for my own work, I must confess that I’m not really a jewelry maker. However, I did reference jewelry in a recent project entitled “Pure Plantainum.” It was a sculptural project that began as an homage to the plátano (green plantain) – a stereotypical yet iconic symbol of Puerto Rican and Caribbean culture. In this series I had actual plantains plated in platinum. The exteriors boast a thin pristine layer of precious metal while the actual fruit decomposes within. They are presented like emblematic jewels that transform cultural stigmas into urban expressions of pride.

-Miguel Luciano

Hi Miguel, thanks for the nice photo you’ve posted. I can see some line crossing with this work of mine. I did it for the dutch fair Sieraad 2007 and contest under the theme Symbols of Faith.

'There is nothing you can't hold on to', LH 2007

For the two pieces I came up with I gave the title There is nothing you can’t hold on to and wrote the following as an additional thought:

There is nothing you can’t hold on to. There isn’t one single way to view the world. There is my way, your way, many ways and that’s exactly where freedom lies. Anyone can have a personal definition of existence and that’s the beautiful thing. Faith becomes a multiform, multicultural, multi-wonder grip.
The line where we hang our thoughts is flexible, swings as we move across our achievements. The paths we trace with conviction aren’t necessarily fixed but they surely should be good. LH2007

I’ve been in your site before and realised you’re mainly working with sculptures and interactive installations.

I am as well curious to know more about your work and specially what made you interested in jewelry?

Hi Lenor,

Thanks for the reply, I’m enjoying reading about your work and ideas. My interest in jewelry is a good question… While I have a tremendous appreciation for jewelry makers and am amazed by the work of the jewelry makers/artists in this group, it’s an area I have modestly explored. I’m generally enamored with the making, crafting and conceptualization of objects. However in my own work, jewelry has been referenced mostly as a commodity, appropriated and manipulated to engage questions of materialism and decadence.

A lot of my work explores consumerism and the influence of popular and consumer culture in our lives. In the Pure Plantainum works for example, the empowerment of the symbol is problematized by the dichotomy of the exterior versus interior materials, a platinum jewel on the surface, a deteriorating plátano within. It’s a layered symbol, embedded with various contradictions that at once celebrate culture while questioning our material desires.

Having said this, I’m interested in how this gray area project might open new ideas. I enjoy seeing peoples’ conceptual approaches to making jewelry, particularly when using unconventional or unexpected materials. I’m still thinking about how to engage our project here and intrigued by the possibilities of collaboration over such distance… where to begin?

PS – is there anyway to get an email notification when someone responds or comments on the blog? I’m sure i’d respond better if I could figure this out. let me know if you have any suggestions.. thanks!

Miguel

Praline, LH 2005

Hi again, consumerism was a subject I’ve stirred in some works as well but more obvious in the series entitled Praline. In this particular case the dichotomy of precious-waste and image-content, emphasizes the subjectivity of people’s notion of value within their social context. As in your work Praline questions the material desires to project them as signs of psychological stereotypes.
In Portugal the material value of a jewel it is still felt as a very strong weight in people’s choice.

Where to begin? That’s THE question  that as been surrounding me for a couple of weeks…

In former posts I’ve mention the comunication as an important issue for me in this project, the crossing of ideas and the diffusion of mental boundaries. But I also came across the analogy macro-micro which I see as a very interesting subject when we come to discuss our way to sense the world: home, territory, property or the feeling of being a corn in the vast  field.

In this project some key issues were lain on the table:
individual and cultural expession
global context
cultural exchange, migration
globalized trends
identity: loss or perdurance
and
how  jewelry addresses all the listed above

another interesting point questioned and perhaps close to the way we might direct this collaboration is: Does cultural exchange lead to broadening artistic borders or to uniformity?

experiments, LH 2009

Hi Miguel I’ve been making some experiments focused on traces. I am doing as well a couple of photographic studies which I hope will be able to post you soon. Till now I feel like these are a bit random explorations but by reflecting upon them I think I am getting closer to a more concrete idea. How are you doing?

Greetings

Hi Leonor,

I like the traces, am here in the studio working on paintings mostly at the moment.. will post pics soon. Apart from this, have been thinking a bit about how my environment / locale  may reflect in this new collaborative work.  I’m currently surrounded by vending machines and kiddie-rides in the studio..

"Cuando las Gallinas Mean", Coin-operated vending machine

Hi Miguel I’ve been away for sometime. Busy with other things for the moment… but I’ve kept thinking in the WGA project and I think am getting closer to a concrete idea. Time is flying and I realise I feel the urge to start organising my thoughts direction a plan of work.
I am back into the idea of thoughts. Thoughts like projected images in what shapes deliniate feelings. Sketches of mental “anatomy”.

Traits, LH 2009

Traits, LH 2009

Traces, LH 2009

Drawing, LH 2009

I am working my way through direction the subject “thoughts”. A key question raised up: How is one’s state of mind when travelling?

How is your state of mind when travelling, walking or wandering? Can you sketch a picture for me?

paper ball

I am glad about that Dani! Any gesture, any thought, any impression you share inspires me too! And that’s all about isn’t it?

Here I am quoting an extract of Kertu Tuberg text for ‘Chroma/Monochroma’.

Nomad Jewellery

Contemporary jewellery carries the philosophy of travelling in itself. The one who makes jewellery is travelling, the one who wears it is travelling, and the one who notices it is travelling. Paths are different and travellers are differents, but at some point they all have recognised their resting place or their home in jewellery. They have discovered something that accords with their nature.

Interesting definitions I found:

Fire =

Liveliness of imagination;

Intellectual and moral enthusiasm;

Brilliancy; luster; hence, a star;

To inflame; to irritate, as the passions; as, to fire the soul with anger, pride, or revenge.

To animate; to give life or spirit to;

To illuminate;

Cause to go off;

Call forth (emotions, feelings, and responses); “arouse pity”; “raise a smile”; “evoke sympathy” ;
provide with fuel.

view on "Segredos e Reliquias" from Teresa Pavão, LH 2009

Today a group of students from the jewelry department of Ar.Co got a guiding tour by the ceramicist and textile artist Teresa Pavão to her exhibition “Segredos e Reliquias” present at the Museum Ricardo Espirito Santo in Lisbon.
I took the chance and joined in, met Dani and other friends, took some photos and got the feeling I was traveling. Traveling because once you enter that museum you feel like being transported to another time. A time where patterns reign.
Patterns overlap patterns, light-shade, miniatures-details. The walls full of paintings become like pages of an album. The paintings themselves portrait the spirit of the specific period. Still-lifes, ships at rough sea, mise en scène of ideals.
Fabrics matching tiles, tiles matching wallpapers, wallpapers matching curtains, curtains matching carpets, carpets matching ceramics, ceramics matching rituals, rituals matching moments, moments matching mentalities, mentalities matching an epoch. Me, the present matching with the past. A line dividing the visitors and the museum’s content. Borderline of two states of mind. A journey lodged in between.

I’ve been thinking a lot in this project and sketching what I am up to make. This reflective process it as been very profiting to me but I regret I didn’t get you more participative on my posts. I wonder what your plans of work for this project are . Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

fingerprint graffiti, LH 2009

When we make a graffiti we are defining a territory at the same time are trespassing the borders of establishments.
A contradition is set when despite being passersby we leave our mark.
Our brief passage is perpetuated on a gesture as if we pass our desire of belongingness to the inscription embossed in the concrete.

Hi Dani it is interesting that you connect the reflexion of yourself in the glass to a ghost. This approaches the way we define things that are vague to us, suspendend in the line of uncertainty, falling off the realm of materiality.
But what would it be that ghost without you?

A person in his individuality never lacks identity. Identity fades when disintegration of the unit occurs. How to precise the very moment a person becomes a ghost?

my shadow, LH 2007

identity=sameness?

cosmo lineas

Hi Lenor,

Catching up with posts, have been traveling some. When I travel, I am in my head, especially in the downtime outside of my routine.. it’s sometimes a welcome and quiet time away… the actual time spent traveling. Time traveling, and time-traveling are actually things that interest me.  Have been thinking for sometime about ideas of time and space, and of the cosmos as a metaphoric space that opens up new possibilities or reconsiderations of our realities. From the Cosmo-vision of the Mayas and other ancient civilizations to the kitsch world of science-fiction and the wonder of space and time today, I am interested in the visual and metaphysical exploration of these ideas.