What to do with 23 things??

Been a busy week organising everything for the exhibition in a couple of weeks. So I thought I would take a break and show you my last project, and my working process.

This was the result of my 23 Rings project, where I made 23 Rings (my age - in case you were wondering!) each with a souvenir from my life, I then held an event inviting people to come and take a ring in exchange for something from their own life, something precious to them.

Then, I had the vastly underestimated task of creating a series of jewellery from these pieces. I begun with the idea of manipulating the object to tell the story of the memory.

I found that this was much to limiting and I felt that it wasn't dealing with the underlying issues, the fact that these items were precious to people, and that they had been given up.

I then came up with the idea of a wearable museum vitrine in which there would only be a trace of the object that had been left behind. It also meant that as the wearer you would be the only person to see the trace of object, everyone else just sees an empty box, bringing it back to the idea of a personal object.

For the 'trace' of the objects I decided, after much testing of different options to use photograms. 

I decided to only make three of the pieces, and as metalwork isn't something that I can claim to be very skilled at (yet!) I decided to make one metal vitrine and two wooden. 

Here was the result!

You can also come and see them in the exhibition! :)

A Sneak Peek!

As I have had so much work on the last couple of weeks not had much time to blog, but hopefully will be back on it when I am finished for the year (not long now! Yay!) So I thought I would give you a sneak peek into my world the last few days.

Looks like some sort of sinister operation, doesn't it? It's really just me glueing together glass!

Will explain what the whole project is in the next couple of days when they are all photographed and looking lovely. 

P.S.  I am organising an Exhibition of my work and others on my course from the 14th-18th of June in Rochester. It should be really good, some great work being made, so put the date in your diaries! More info on that to follow too. 

23 Rings...The result.

The photo above shows a few of the Items swapped in my 23 Rings Installation (I will upload more next time), from a ring given from a girls first love, to a toy car passed down through a family, to a damaged rose joint from the kart of a young man’s last race.

Overall I had a great response and was overwhelmed by what people were willing to part with! There was a great mixture of people who came to swap from different ages and backgrounds, and this resulted in a great mix of objects that were swapped. Some of those who came to see the installation couldn’t bear to part with anything, and then there were others who came in, not knowing it was going on and gave up very sentimental items. 

I can’t wait to start making the next series of jewellery pieces, I will hopefully be combining both the memory and the object into (possibly) necklaces. I have some idea’s already of what I will do with some of them, but you will have to wait and see! 

I will be exhibiting the resulting series in an exhibition in Rochester from the 13th-19th June (more details to come soon!)

Getting Ready :)

I am excitedly (and a little bit nervously) getting ready for tomorrow's installation. Stupidly I decided to redo all my tags last night so I have been painstakingly hand stamping my tags since, lets hope it is worth the effort!

If you are thinking of coming along or are just nosey follow me @23Rings over on twitter for live updates or find out more on my website: http://www.laura-bell.co.uk

23 Rings...The Installation

Would love to see you there if you can make it! 

I will also be selling my other jewellery at the event.

23 Rings...Made.

It feels as though I have been working on this project for ages, I can't believe it has only been 5 weeks!

I finally handed them in for assessment today, feels so good not to have the stress for a little while.

I will be organising time/place/date for the installation event this week so watch this space!

Here it is set out on my desk at uni, this is not how they would actually be displayed! :)