Oh, The Quirkiness Of It

Hello Tuesday!! Contextual studies is probably one of the classes that gets my brain working, I must say its alot more simpler than last semester's lectures.  I enjoy hearing from our teachers. Today in our lecture we had the pleasure of hearing from Mary Curtis.  A jeweler who has particular interest in quirky groups of objects. Upon seeing a group or collection of similar objects, she gets excited and is very much so interested in the function of each object, she also looks at the similarities and differences of the objects, the visual differences, the functional differences and the stories that each of these objects tell us.  Mary Curtis is a very visual person and architecture informs some of her work.  Some of her work is indeed very formal, as she was trained as a jeweler, but she tries to resist the formality, but now embraces it.  Curtis sees her process of making as a process of collage.  Not only is Mary interested in collections of various objects, but she is also a very visual person and often collects images, whether they be photographs that she has taken or sourced images from books, internet and other artists.

Mary Curtis often reinterprets objects from a different time period. For example Mary would source an image of an elaborate brooch, such as an English Mid 19th Century Amethyst Brooch and re-make this piece into her own piece of modern jewellery.  Mary sources many images of interest.  She often works in a visual diary and collages images together, whether they be pictures of beautiful chandeliers, rooms that have been decorated so much that its impossible to function in and much more.  

The way Mary Curtis draws her inspirations and ideas reminds me very much of the way that we were encouraged to work in college.  We were encouraged to look through countless books for images that we found of interest or that informed our work.  We would use these artist models to develop our work.  And to this day we are still in Uni encouraged to look at artists source materials and pictures so that we as makers can develop and push our work further.  I often look re look at books and pictures that I like.  I cut pictures out of magazines and stick them on my wall or in a book.  As I am very much a visual person, I read the images and find that doing this is easier than reading words.  I like to look and feel, rather than to read, because I can come up with so many more words by doing so.