by Grayce Scholt | Contributing writer
“Expanding Decoration” is an exhibit of attractive and unusual jewelry in Mott Community College’s Fine Arts Gallery.
Viewers can see the exhibit and then create objects for themselves by downloading instructions from the Internet.
Trained as a metalsmith at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Detroit-area artist Sarah Kate Burgess moved from the constraints of metals to objects discarded in trash. She collected the “stuff of daily life,” from the Massachusetts seashore and in garage sales and thrift shops in Michigan.
The objects in “The Illustrated Necklace” and “Do It Yourself Rings” are exquisitely cut, intricately designed pieces that invite viewers to “adorn” themselves by engaging in the sheer physical pleasure of making beautiful objects with their own hands.
Specific directions for making the necklaces and rings in the exhibit can be downloaded at www.adorneveryday.com. The often delicate necklaces and rings are made out of folded paper and chains, the gilt on embossed holiday cards, thread, tubing, pins, staples, zippers, snaps and tape. Regardless of the material, it is the making and the wearing of the object that forms the significant collaboration between maker and wearer. The “wearer activates the object,” she says. Burgess said she delights in exploring the complicated interplay between the real and the unreal. The “fake,” she said, often has its own reason for being. A huge earring, for example, could not be worn dangling from an ear lobe if it were actual because of its weight. Its very “fakeness” makes it “real.” She also explores the effect of adornment on the wearer. When objects are worn in a celebratory manner (as in costumes, for example ) Burgess says they bring their own kind of magic to the wearer. They create a feeling that is something apart from ordinary, workaday existence, and somehow, she hopes, “they help to control life and make it better.”
Source: http://www.mlive.com
