School of Design Silversmithing & Jewellery
Diane Green
Contemplating Chaos
My work is a response to a world that I find increasingly chaotic. It is about sorrow, but also joy. I offer a space for contemplation.
My pieces build on metaphors that I have been exploring in my practice; the crack or tear, the fragment and the space between the fragments. Each has an aspect of being broken to convey how it can feel to walk through the world witnessing or experiencing the tragic in everyday life; inequality, conflict, communication breakdown and climate change. Each piece has an element of beauty to represent those moments of joy that can be found amidst this chaos and which can offer relief or hope.
I have used a wide range of precious, but mostly non precious materials to create the fragments that are reformed into objects of beauty and which I hope inspire thought. Enamelling, casting and etching are techniques used to distress and to rebuild. Rusts with dull and bright colours and shades of light and dark are used to reflect the dual nature of living.
Contact
Joy and Sorrow
This work focuses on joy and sorrow which are two sides of the same coin. The hope is that moments of joy can be found in spaces between the sorrows.
Joy, which is precious is made of silver, a precious metal, while sorrow is made from copper mesh and lace, a material often associated with mourning.
Fake News
This piece, made of fibre and calico cotton is a reflection on communication and our world being increasingly full of fake news. This concept is represented by abstracted words machine sewn into a necklace. The viewer can choose to see this as an object of contemplation or simply as a piece of jewellery made of beautiful materials.
A ring made of copper, contains a piece of abstracted words, and complements the necklace.
Reconfigure
Reconfigure 2 is made from cast silver links joining fragments that signify something that is broken and the loss and sorrow that can result. By using the broken fragments to create something that is beautiful the piece offers contemplation of repair or hope. What is broken is open to ones own personal interpretation.
The piece is made from silver, copper mesh and copper wire dipped in industrial enamel, pva glue and spray paint.
Fragility is a ring made from similar materials but adds in a found fragment of slate linking Reconfigure 2 with Reconfigure 1.
Reconfigure 1 has a chain made of copper wire embedded with imprints of mesh, and is patinated. It too is a piece made of broken and found objects.
