The dual natures of faith, politics, and gender came to a passionate head during the events of Joan d'Arc's life. Powerful and fragile, beautiful and deadly, her beliefs and actions transgressed the norm in ways that made her beloved and remembered by people but also lead to her horrific death. These rings show the good and the bad of her story.
Objects are made powerful and real through the belief we put into them. I gathered stories and images of important individuals who are frequently absent from my friend's lives and from them made these small figurines for them to focus their thoughts and emotions on. Our society is not very open to emotional connections with objects. At best it is shrugged off as sentimentality. Most of our possessions are designed to be disposed of and replaced. But objects can have a huge emotional presence in our lives and be valuable tools for our mental survival.
Smart phones are incredibly powerful tools. Without them it is difficult to live a modern lifestyle and, for people like me with truly terrible memories and senses of direction, they can literally be a life saver. So what if we treated an object of this value the way valuable things were treated in past centuries?
I set out to mimic the ethereal way light from stain glass windows dances over objects. Cathedrals always fill me with a sense of wonder. As soon as I walk through the doors I always feel my gut drop out and all coherent thought cease. If I can mirror even a tiny piece of that sencation and bring it into a smaller scale privat interaction between a person and an object I will be happy.
I wish to make jewelry that showcases the most valuable thing I know of: Stories. Abstracted and symbolic illustration is a rare and ambiguous language that first captures the viewers intrest but then invites them to create their own story to fill in the gaps in their knowlage.