Great to be part of Jewellery LAB a cohert of 10 makers – with Raewyn Walsh, Sharon Fitness, Keri mei Zagrobelna, Elfi Spiewack, Amelia Rothwell, Justine Fletcher, Nina van Dujinhoven, Lisa van Hulst, Sandra Schmid – a professional development and exhibition initiative, for jewellery artists ready to ‘challenge, reimagine, and expand their practice’.

The programme started in December with a series of six, 2-hour, online workshops led by Estela Saez. We are three down, three to go. The next one is on Wednesday, the final one is on 19 February. Other opportunities include an invitation to online lectures – Liesbeth den Besten & Jorunn Veiteberg, lectures/workshop tutorials with Andrea Daly & Neke Moa, and access to structured coaching for those who are interested. The programme culminates with a ‘Loose and Brave’ show at The National in October, with an award for an artist demonstrating conceptual ingenuity and material innovation. The timing is great, because while its been great to get it out of my head all the conceptualising has not taken me anywhere interesting and I’m now bored with it!

Session 1. Individual presentation of six works, followed by the gifting of a word from one of the cohert that captures the essence of our practice. My word ‘considered’. We were each asked to bring a broken object of sentimental value, and given 15minutes to fix it in a way that aligned with our gifted word using materials to hand. I ‘fixed’ my childhood teddybear which had a broken internal music box.

We were then gifted an ‘opposite’ word with homework to complete an A2 collage, embracing our new word. My word, ‘impulsive’.