As a maker of objects, I have navigated the waters of sentiment and studied the point when an object becomes a beloved object. This often involves a transaction: a gift, a purchase, the exchange of wedding vows. It involves time. The years spent wearing (or living with) the piece – getting to know it a little more each day. In the case of a wedding ring, it requires understanding its relationship to your body, the weather, the environment, the work one does, one’s age. The Mexican essayist, poet, and diplomat Octavio Paz, in one of my favorite essays, said, “The handmade object does not charm us simply because of its usefulness. It lives in complicity with our senses, and that is why it is so hard to get rid of – it is like throwing a friend out of the house”. I am humbled that some of the objects I have made live daily with friends and strangers alike. Over the last five years of making jewelry, I’ve returned to this idea of making the quiet things that are worn daily, that are impossible to part with. What would make your list?
California Love Song at Shibumi Gallery
CALIFORNIA LOVE SONG
Maya Kini + Laura Lienhard
May 4th - May 29th, 2024
MEET THE ARTISTS
JOIN US FOR A GLASS OF WINE!
SATURDAY, MAY 11TH FROM 3:30 - 5:30 PM
SHIBUMI is pleased to present CALIFORNIA LOVE SONG featuring artists Maya Kini and Laura Lienhard. The artists have shared a studio on the Sausalito Waterfront since August 2020.
Abalone from agate beach, a sea urchin cast in silver, rough gemstones set in luminous gold, and antique coral linked with alloys of copper, gold and silver.
The textures of a February walk in Tennessee Valley as shadows grow long and the first buds appear on willows, navigating around puddles on a muddy trail until the beach opens up ahead and reveals a treasure trove of iridescent mussel shells, or sand dollars, or a bloom of jelly fish glinting like diamonds on the sand.
The acid green of eucalyptus leaves, the fiery brown of a madrone’s curling bark, the reflective surface of the Bay as the sun sets, and, always, the ocean lapping at the edge of California.”
Alluvial Deposits (after Carboplatin chemotherapy)
This poem is part of a series in which I explore traditional jewelry materials and the ways in which they relate to the body. When I was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, I tried to keep my material curiosity alive by tracing the medicines back to their roots, in this case the element platinum. I thought a lot about how systems within the body mimic systems without, veins and arteries echo streams and rivers, sediments accumulate in silt and bone. Thank you to Metalsmith Magazine for inviting me to publish this poem.
Alluvial Deposits (after Carboplatin chemotherapy)
My friend with size 12 fingers insists on platinum
so I set to work carving wedding ring from wax block
refining the crude hacks of my handsaw
with a file and a multitude of sandpapers.
It weighs barely a gram, this brittle model
but transformed into metal it will become
a heavy ballast, it will right the ship,
at least that is what my friend imagines.
I carve slashes into satiny 600-grit surface
as if it has been mauled by a bear my friend directs me
he is watching a Werner Herzog movie
about caves and signs, man and animal.
He wants the animal present in the ring I craft.
I could hone a bear claw, make a tiny tool
become a Wild Thing scratching at ring’s surface
instead, I use precision tungsten burrs to engrave an ursine alphabet.
II
What constitutes treasure is subject to interpretation.
Aguirre, spun round on a river raft, searching
for El Dorado. The contents of the treasure chest
are usually gold and gems, perhaps feathers
ink, bone, water.
I’ve never seen a chest full of silver’s dull, heavy relative
But I’ve tasted it. Platinum flowed through my veins.
I have known it to be a precise poison
that lingers still
as heavy metals do.
When my living is done
when blood and bile leach back into earth
when my seas evaporate
and my fascia lets go
the well-built pyre of my bones
will reach substantial temperatures
capable of drawing platinum out
and you will find that all along
deep in marrow hair follicle
it’s been mating with the gold.
Conversations in the Middle - Metalsmith Magazine article
I’ve written an article that appears in the new issue of Metalsmith Magazine available digitally or in print. The piece asks the question, How to begin again?, in the studio and beyond. I hope you’ll read the stories about the three artists I profile in the piece.