My Word!

Had another nice (though wet, followed by steamy) morning at the Bloomington Farmer's Market art fair yesterday. One thing I love about doing art fairs is getting the opportunity to hear customers telling others about my work-- not just because they're usually saying nice things, and that makes me feel good, but also because people see my work in many different ways, and listening to how they explain it to others helps me see my own work in new ways.

Yesterday I overheard someone explaining to her friend that I put 'inspirational' words on my pieces. Now, I don't really think of what I do in quite that way. It's a case of "what you bring, you find" (as Longfellow put it). What I do is search for words and phrases that resonate when combined with color, shape, and viewer-- when a piece hits the right resonant frequency with a person, the meaning is amplified and very clear to them, and they respond-- sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. For some people, it's an inspirational frequency. For others, it's something else entirely.

Often people find shades of meaning that I did not anticipate. Words and phrases that don't really resonate for me do for others, and sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised when text that I think is maybe a little idiosyncratic and that perhaps no one but me will ever like ends up being very meaningful for someone else, too.

That interplay is what my jewelry is 'really' about, for me. It's a composition that I start, and you finish.