Wato wato

At last this cuff is finished! After completely messing up the first one and having more than a few challenges with this version I am happy to see it go to its new owner. I call this piece ‘wear your heart on your sleeve’. If you are in the area it is on show at the White Out exhibition in Truro until Friday.

It now belongs to Paul Pennington. You may recall his wife runs the Jewellery Workshop in Porthleven. He wanted this design to compliment the pebbles bangle I made for Clair that is shown in a previous posting. For those interested in the name it came about as a result of a College brief.

I thought that hearts abound in fashion, design and jewellery, as a child I was always fascinated by the very small. Typically beastly boy always muddy, grubbing about in the soil and ponds looking at amphibians and insects. When I discovered microscopic images I was blown away by the complexity and beauty of the hidden world right in front of us that we are not able to see with the naked eye. As an adult I was fortunate enough to be given a microscope for a birthday present, I wish I had more time to look at it, ah well the time constraints and pressures eh!

I went on-line and looked up microscopic images of heart muscle. At relatively low magnifications the heart muscle is like interconnected worms, well thats how it looks to me anyway. I took this set of images and interconnected them to make it more visually interesting and came up with the design you see here. As a bit of fun and a total fluke, the theme allows me to use the old saying of wearing your heart on your sleeve, I find I’m as chuffed about that as anything else about it. I love the fact that whoever wears it will be able to play guess the theme with whoever is looking at it.

Being a very highly raised design it stands out very well, not one for shrinking violets 😉 Being a chap I had given no thought to the gross factor that some of my lady peers expressed at the thought of wearing a representation of heart muscle, is it me?

The good news is that most people who view it for the first time associate it with interconnected vines or tree roots, good oh eh, far less embarrassing for me and another fantastic fluke.

Going on like this, I hope to give you some idea that beautiful accidents do happen. Think design opportunities, not mistakes. Again this is another creation of mine that has not universally won all popularity contests.The way I see it is that if you try to please everyone, not only is this not realistic, it is also timid.

When I bump up against a creative wall as it were, my long suffering supporter, best friend and brutally honest wife Reen has taken to telling me; ‘Just @*ing hit it” This has served me well on more than one occasion.

I respectively pass on her words of ‘encouragement’ to you as I am easily paralysed by indecision, as I’m sure many of you are. Know this however if you make a mess, at least you made something and a lesson was learned by you empirically in a world seemingly paralysed by academia, theory and the fear of getting it wrong. In a world of armchair experts it’s your opportunity to plough your own furrow and enter a wonderful, thrilling and ultimately sometimes scary world of the unknown that holds the promise of great adventures yet to be discovered. Until next time, JUST *@ING HIT IT 🙂 All my very best wishes. Stu Art.