Heather White van Stolk
West Roxbury, Massachusetts
Murmuring Brooch
gold, sterling, garnets and pearls, petals cast from human lips
When
I made this piece I was thinking about how to manifest a murmur as jewelry. 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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