This necklace is my favorite latest piece. I painstakingly cut this face from a ceramic virgin Mary figurine and mounted it to a beautiful silver-plated jewelry finding that had a perfectly complimentary shape to serve as a foundation. I carefully formed her crown from another vintage jewelry finding and fitted it and the silver horns to fit her head perfectly. I love using found object and unconventional materials in unexpected ways. Taking disparate elements and blending them together in a harmonious way is like the visual equivalent to solving a riddle; it can be infinitely more pleasurable an activity to me than making things from scratch. I find things that I love to hold and look at, I study on it. I find a way to put the puzzle together in a pleasing fashion.
This piece conjures up ceremonial, mythological, iconographic, pagany idolatry. The fact that her eyes are closed really interests me. Eyes closed means rest, dreaming, meditation, prayer, deep concentration, shutting out this world and going within. When we're being formed in the womb ours eyes are closed. Many animals are born with eyes closed and they remain so for weeks, so young and vulnerable, not ready to look out onto the world yet. Eyes are closed in death too, or at least that's how we prefer to present our dead. Think of all those beautiful plaster death masks; a face frozen, eyes forever closed to the world.
I think her eyes are closed because she is a Shaman in a trance state, interacting with the spirit world. Shamans treat ailments that show up in the body or in the tribe by mending the soul; they find a spiritual solution in the supernatural realm which in turn manifests itself the human world.
She looks peaceful, calm, confident; she is studying on it. She'll find the solution she seeks, I have complete faith in her.
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