The Lost Art of Using Things Up
I’m especially drawn to materials that are decidedly not precious—things many even consider to be trash. I do this in all aspects of my life, but it's especially obvious in this work of upcycling decorative tin containers into art jewelry.
Finding the tins and selecting the most intriguing areas to work with is, in many ways, a holdover from my graphic design training. Oddly, I find it both comforting and challenging to work with found imagery. Many people who work with tin focus first on the amazing images, but I find that I'm more interested in pushing the material to play with new shapes and forms and letting the imagery become secondary. Which is interesting because I've also spent the last few years exploring how I can transform boring, plain colored tins into surfaces filled with unique patterns, textures and patinas. In some ways the surfaces I create are more intriguing to me now than the ones I find readymade.
The raw tin is an amazingly flexible material allowing for limitless possibilities, but regardless of where I wander with shapes and styles, you will always find me returning to circles. It's a cycle, if you will. This most perfect of shapes is perfect for making everything from shallow basins to cones to everything in between. So, even as I'm always making new and interesting styles and designs, I will also always be creating pieces with circles.
I've worked with tin for so long now it often feels like there's nothing new I could possibly come up with, yet somehow I always do. It's sort of magical in some ways.
