Heather White van Stolk
West Roxbury, Massachusetts
Belly Button Brooch: Three
Brooch
made from silver, gold springs, nickel silver and pigment.
The
flower blossom shapes are cast form belly buttons.
Recently,
I have been creating Botanical Fictions, jewelry that collaborates with nature and the body. These fictions manifest as large,
flamboyant corsage brooches, sensual vine-like neckpieces, and tiny pins. They
use fragmented sections of the body, some of which are recognizable like the
navel, nipple, eye, lip and teeth, and others more obscure like birth or beauty
marks. Once these sections of the body are cast, reconfigured and placed back
on the body, they evoke. The botanical forms are beautiful, graceful and
sometimes humorous as they narrate sensual and raw passages.
The
use of body parts as adornment has a significant history. It exists in
sentimental genres (mourning jewelry, portraiture jewelry and milagros) and
that of the ancient warrior (wearing fragments of the conquered). In contemporary
Western culture however, deconstruction of the human figure can be viewed as
disembodiment. It is through my conscientious use of the body with the ritual
of repetition, the process of casting, and the creation of wearable flower
formations that these works create a botanical gestalt.
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