Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Dear ALL cyber angels out there…

Now I will have a break, I will return to this blog in the beginning of January 2010.

Take care and enjoy life and I wish that you all get what you wish.

I have said it before and I do it again…
MERRY CHRISTMAS and
A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I did this angel collage today, and I think it fits very well as the last post of 2009.

memory...

This is a game that I have done for my work at Kulturlabbet, I work with photo 50% a week.

I had the idea of using images that the workers recognize, felt connected to, to create their own game, a game that they have been a part of, some of the photos has the workers that I work with taken, I have also taken some of the photos just to be sure that more or less all the moments in the daily work is in it…

Today I gave it to them as some kind of Christmas gift and they used it this afternoon, very very satisfied over the game, so are I, I get happy and grateful that they like it and that they all appreciate the motives from the daily surroundings, both indoors and outside.
A lot of happy faces in the end of the day.
I hope they will play the memory game all the day until Chritmas holiday.

http://www.kulturlabbet.se/Index_english.htm

Kulturlabbet is a workplace for artists with intellectual disabilities.
Kulturlabbet turns to people with intellectual disabilities, interested in creative/artistic
and self-developing teamwork.
Mainly we focus on theatre/drama, art, dance/movement and music.

Monday, December 14, 2009

noovo...

http://www.noovoeditions.com/

An interesting and great site that my friend Joanne Haywood sent to me as a link…
Take a look!

x-mas gifts...

Ära vare gud i höjden, dessa har jag gjort i slöjden.

I don’t know how to translate this, but is some hobby work for some of my friends in Spain, UK and Luxembourg…

These are friend that I have met in the cyber space from the beginning and being friends with in reality, amazing!

Montserrat made my day...

Today I get this lovely aquatint delivered by the mailman…
Thank you Montserrat!

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Lucia day today...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lucy%27s_Day

Karen Donnellan...

Material: Site specific mixed media scultpure,
turned bass wood, blown glass, steel, epoxy resin
dimensions variable

http://crafthaus.ning.com/profile/KarenDonnellan/

I like these sculptures very very much, I get some kind of calmness over me when I look at them, it would be nice to see them in “real” life…

Vicky Hunt...

Material: Merino wool (wet felted & needle felted), UV resin, natural rough diamonds, Faux Bone and sterling silver.

http://crafthaus.ning.com/profile/VickyTHunt?xg_source=activity

http://crafthaus.ning.com/photo/happy-horny-fungi-ring?context=user

I will pick up this trace again…

...



collage...

I don’t have the energy to do something today, just playing around with photos…

yesterday evening...

Yesterday evening, my sweet neighbour Charlotte stopped by with some Christmas and
“take care of me” gifts…I get a red rose and some soft sugar Santa’s candy.
It made my tired and sneezing day!

I get touched about my sweet neighbours, they are all so kind to me… one day I get a news paper with/about Serena Holms jewellery work in my briefcase from an other neighbour who knows that I’m a jewellery artist.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Ugne Blazyte...

Ugne Blazyte from Lithuania, one of the artists at KORU3 and also one of the participants in the same group that I was in, by Constanze Schreiber.

http://www.ugneblazyte.com/en/

...

I want so much but have no energy at all right now.
A powerless weekend… I have to be indoors and curate my cold…
Time for catching up things, try ideas, sleep, do some new things, drinking tea, relax etc.

Friday, December 11, 2009

it started four years ago...

Now when I have been talking about my old “sins” or my attempts to learn and to develop the idea of using the internet in the last week; first around the round table talk with Damian Skinner from New Zealand and later on a speech for the students at the School of Crafts and Design at the University of Gothenburg…

I post the old sins addresses, IF you have time to visit and are interesting of the beginning…
Just click at the links and you will see what has happen the last 4 years.

http://www.jewelleryproject.blogspot.com/


http://www.f-art-projekt.blogspot.com/?zx=61ee639fadf5a019

It’s not a problem to open the f-art blog…
Something happens long time ago, but no worry, just take a look.

I like this idea...

A tree in Imatra, Finland… They take care of the forest…

Paula Lindblom...

I have caught a bad cold and need to be cured by pain killers and love…

from Alejandra Solar...

Mexican candy and photos from our time together in Imatra, Finland and a lovely letter,
Thank you Ale, always nice to come home and have a mail waiting.

Christmas down town...

...

Emma Linde...

Today I was speaking at HDK about my artwork after I left school; the second speaker was Emma Linde,
I stay and listen to her speech and it was interesting and also in a strange way very close to my own ideas, but at the surface we are miles form each other, it’s more in the ideas, why and how we doing, what we doing…
If it makes some sense?!
I hope we can take a coffee break together some day and talk a little bite more about our works…

It was a great time and I think it was good listener and some good questions too, unlucky I felt that my cold was not any better, so pain killer and saltwater have been my way of handle it.


In this work textile artist Emma Linde has used a few ordinary items from our everyday life and given them a new form and meaning. Five bed sheets have been torn into shreds that in turn have been rolled up into a tart-like and circular horizontal form. Utility articles have been converted into an art object, but it is in fact not this particular transformation that holds our greatest interest here. Instead of theoretical issues regarding its identity, it is the object’s place in the physical world that insists on claiming our attention. How are we to approach this bewildering thing, and what is its relation to its surroundings?
On one level everything is most concrete. The compositional idea is simple, and the artist seems to have been driven by her interest in the tangible quality of her material. The varying colour of each individual sheet reveals the material construction of this new object, and at the same time form the appearance of a target board that self-confidently proclaims, “Here it is!” The gaze is drawn towards the centre, but also towards the printed text that runs around the edges, matter-of-factly telling us the exact total length of the combined shreds. The object so to speak refers back to itself, giving us an account of its own constitution.
The movement towards the middle, the centre, contrasts with the sense of dimensions and extension conveyed by the pronounced length of the shreds. Here we perceive a tension between the object’s concentration and the potential disintegration of its form. In a rolled-out state, the shreds could be used to cordon off an area or, as in a classic adventure story, be tied together to form the fugitive’s escape route to freedom – a temporary connection between the window of the prison cell and the ground below. They could also lend themselves to, say, use as a bandage or as weaving material for a rag rug. The centre of gravity in our perception of the figure lies not in what its material used to be, but in what it could become, what forms it could assume, what roles and what kind of places it could occupy. Notwithstanding the marked, distinct shape of the form, one senses the presence of a future disintegration or transformation.
Such transformative potential of the material lends itself to interpretation as a metaphor for the multiple, shifting identities of the crafts and their ability to function in different ways in varying contexts. The slightly absurd way in which the measured length of the shredded sheets is brought up also indirectly reminds us that quantitative assessment only yields limited information of the work. What it all concerns here has to do with more than merely the measurable qualities of the material, and the work can be gauged in more ways than one.

Emma Linde (b. 1972 Sweden) is a textile artist and lives in Gothenburg.

Text and photo from http://www.thinktank04.eu/page.php?5,24,107

Thursday, December 10, 2009

a melancholic face…

Today I have plans to meet Camilla Engman and take a coffee with her in her studio, close by… Unlucky I have catch a bad cold, I’m sneezing and have fever and felt very very bad today.
I hope we can see each other some other day, at the New Year…
http://camillaengman.blogspot.com/

The evening was planed to go to restaurant with my work at Kulturlabbet and afterwards a speech by Lasse Eriksson at the concert hall.
http://www.lasseeriksson.se/

Isn’t it typical, when nice things pop up, you have to say; no thanks, I’m lying here and reading a book and sleep instead… Hm?!

I have to be on my feet’s tomorrow, and then I will give a speech about my jewellery work and blog work for the students at the School of Crafts and Design at the University of Gothenburg, HDK.
http://www.hdk.gu.se/
I look forward that and I hope that I will be better tomorrow.
I close down the computer and cross my fingers for the rest of the day...

yesterdays birds in my way…

I have always being fascinated by birds, but I’m also a little bite scared of them… they can be colourful coloured, but they can also jump at your coffee table or attack you…

I use a lot of birds in my jewellery pieces, first it’s easy to catch them at the flea market, because the industries has produced a lot of porcelain birds in different shapes and sizes and after awhile people get boring of their birds and give or throw them away, but also that bird is among the first creatures on the planet who felt when the ecosystem is in disorder, therefore it’s good for me to use them as symbol of the over consumer society.

grey cold and rainy days, makes poetry in the end…

The grey and cold and rainy could be beautiful with all the silence… a single rain drop on a branch, hanging there and waiting for leaving…

patterns by nature…

...

the round-table discussion in Gothenburg...

On Tuesday December 8 a group of former students and current faculty of the School of Crafts and Design at the University of Gothenburg gathered at the school for a seminar with Damian Skinner, a New Zealand art historian. Damian, who visits Sweden this week on invitation from Iaspis, the International Artists’ Studio Program in Sweden, has written extensively on contemporary New Zealand jewellery and also works as a curator. He told us that his engagement with jewellery started almost incidentally when he wrote a review of a Warwick Freeman show, which led to more contacts with that artist and finally resulted in the writing of the book “Given: Jewellery by Warwick Freeman”, published in 2004. Those of you who are fans of Lisa Walker will also recognise Damian’s writings from the essays he has written for some of her catalogues.
The round-table discussion in Gothenburg focused on differences and similarities between Swedish and New Zealand jewellery. As Damian described, New Zealand jewellers have for long felt isolated from the rest of the world, and particularly from Europe. Paradoxically, this is an experience that probably many Scandinavian jewellery artists also can recognise, even if international contacts have become increasingly frequent in the last decade(s).
The discussion also touched upon cultural differences and how they affect the making and interpretation of jewellery. The Swedish jewellers had all brought pieces of our own which we presented. Damian wore a small brooch by Areta Wilkinson, a jeweller who belongs to New Zealand’s indigenous Maori community. The brooch is in the form of a small label or price tag in silver, hanging in a simple thread and pinned to the clothing with an ordinary safety pin. Damian explained that the tag referred to labelling, with special regard to how historical objects are labelled and named in museum collections. Needless to say, the experience of having the objects of their culture collected and labelled by others is highly problematic for the Maori. A comparison was made in the discussion between Areta Wilkinson’s piece and a similar price tag piece made by the Swedish jeweller Ulrika Swärd a few years ago. In Ulrika’s piece, the motif of the price tag seems connected to a reflection on consumption rather than museum collections. This was a striking example of how two works that are formally very similar can bear different meanings.

Text by Love Jönsson, a short explanation of what we where discussing and argue about.


The jewellery artist around the round –table was; Karin Johansson, Mona Wallstöm, Pia Aleborg, Serena Holm, Özay Emert, Lena Olson and Paula Lindblom.


Karin Johansson http://www.hdk.gu.se/sv/personal/karin-johansson

Mona Wallstöm http://www.monawallstrom.se/

Pia Aleborg http://www.piaaleborg.com/

Serena Holm http://www.klimt02.net/jewellers/index.php?item_id=7550

Özay Emert http://www2.hdk.gu.se/examen08/master/ozayemert/

Lena Olson http://www.lenaolson.se/

Paula Lindblom http://paula-lindblom.blogspot.com/
http://www.paula.nu/



Love Jönsson was the one who arrange the round –table discussion and invited us all to this interesting meeting.

We never come to an eventual idea of collaboration between the New Zealand and Sweden; I think that could be really interesting to see what can come up, if it is possible to do some kind of collaboration between the two countries… Sweden is a small country and NZ is an isolated country, different “problems” of being a jewellery artist in these countries, Sweden has a longer design tradition, the Scandinavian light and lines to struggle against (at least for me… and some others too) and the NZ has their history of being an isolated island, with a lot of jewellery values, more ethnical jewellery or ornaments, adornments from both NZ and the island around in the pacific seas. For me up in the North it’s exotics, but in the other way Sweden is also very exotic for people from other countries… so everything are about what lens or angle you choose to look at.


I hope when Damian Skinner returns to NZ after this trip, he will have some kind of plan, together with Love Jönsson, about who they think collaboration could look like.

I am absolutely interesting to see what it will end up in and I’m also interesting to be a part of this… So the only thing we can do is to wait and see what’s comes out of this meeting.

Areta Wilkinson http://www.fingers.co.nz/exhibitors/areta_wilkinson.htm


Areta Wilkinson is a leading Maori jeweller. Through her work she explores ideas about adornment, wealth, and the preciousness of materials. She also examines local and global issues, including identity (particularly her Ngai Tahu identity), dislocation, memory, protection, and spirituality.
Although much of Wilkinson’s work relates to her Maori/Ngai Tahu identity, it generally does not draw on the forms of customary Maori jewellery such as heitiki. Like fellow jeweller Gina Matchitt, Wilkinson’s art often combines Maori concepts with contemporary issues and European abstract form.
The pendants in Wilkinson’s 96:04 Series can be interpreted as a critique of museum and art gallery practice. Wilkinson studied the way that museums and art galleries record and label the objects in their collections. She then made the pendants from precious materials, but sandblasted each one with a large number that dominates it, deliberately overshadowing the value and meaning of the materials it is made from.
Through these works, Wilkinson is commenting on how taonga (treasured objects) in museums and galleries have been taken out of their social and spiritual contexts and placed in new ones. In a broader sense, she is looking at people’s relationship to objects, the way dominant cultures record the objects of other cultures, and the difficulties of maintaining a Maori identity in a non-Maori setting.
The works in the 96:04 Series need not only be interpreted as a critique of museum or art gallery labels. They can also be seen as almost any labels that categorise people or things – military dog tags, luggage labels, or even concentration camp numbers.
Labels are a recurring theme in Wilkinson’s work. Her 97:01 Series (made in 1997) is based on retail price tags. Her 96:05 Series is a set of triangular silver settings, each holding fragments of taonga. The fragments include fibre, stone, shell, wood, bone and feathers. The back of each setting is stamped with an object number, and the warning ‘DO NOT TOUCH’ – standard advice given in museums and art galleries.
In the catalogue for Areta Wilkinson’s Wai – recollected works exhibition, Dr Deidre Brown writes, ‘We all carry labels. They mark the beginning and end of our lives and are continually being applied to us by ourselves and by others who need to place us within their own systems of understanding. Our labels are as familiar as our faces . . . ’

Text from¸ http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/Theme.aspx?irn=1075

Unlucky I couldn’t find the label by Areta Wilkinson.

Ulrika Swärd http://www.ulrikasward.se/Valkommen.html
The image of the label is made by Ulrika Swärd.