“Witch Vessel”

Materials: Silver, steel, dried stem, handmade linen thread, driftwood base

Dimensions: 18cmx 10cm x 54cm

The Witch Vessel is composed of a number of elements, together to creating an expressive, sculptural form from the traditions of Silversmithing. The core of the piece is a hand raised silver vessel, worked up from flat silver sheet with a process of circular hammering, gifting it a soft, organic feel, quenched white, warm and inviting, a form you can imagine holding. A black sketch of a ball bursts within it, a series of hammered steel wires, woven and soldered together, floats within, contained by the top of the vessel. Through this and bound to it is a bolt of dried seed heads, tied in with soft handmade linen thread binding, these wild lines evoking the landscape, summoning a sense of nature, of being from another, other place.

Primarily my practice is prompted by my reaction to place, to a sense of being in a landscape, it is a physical manifestation of feelings, ideas, imagined stories which need to be told. The materials in my work informs everything, how I’m drawn to collect and gather materials and found objects, the challenge of how to use them in a manner which elevates what they have to say. There is a response too in how I work my chosen materials- in a way so they compliment the found and the gathered, at times being difficult to see which was found, which was fabricated. Ultimately they aim to cause a reaction with the viewer – to make connections, interpretations and find stories of their own within them.