3.5 x 1.4 x 0.7 cm, 4 g
Sterling Silver, 14k Gold Posts, Oxidizing Patina
In Smith's artistic practice, she considers place and the intimate connection to her sense of identity and home. Walking, observing, and gathering are daily rituals that require a commitment to careful observation. Smith combines vitreous enamel with textured metal surfaces. She constructs a tactile, delicate surface of repetitive dots and marks creating a language or code. This is an invented language, a code that generates a dialogue concerning the natural world. Smith is memorializing and commemorating the transient, unnoticed moments of our natural and reminding us quotidian occurrences in nature offer a protection for these uncertain times.
Smith believes jewellery is a remarkable language: a meaningful code, open for investigations. Jan is absorbed by jewellery's capability of identifying and marking a body and as a carrier of meanings, and its portability. Jewellery is both intimate and public, almost performantive in nature; Smith is intrigued by the dialogue that is created as it moves about on a body interacting with viewers. These earrings focus on shape and movement and about finding new directions.
Smith's work includes the techniques of hand-fabrication, each piece of the earrings is sawn and soldered individually to form the shapes. The colour is provided by champlevé enameling in which acid removes metal from unprotected areas creating both marks and chambers. Vitreous enamel, a type of powered glass is sifted or wet packed into the chambers. The glass coated metal is fired in a kiln at 1450-1500 degrees Fahrenheit. Different temperatures and lengths of firing times allow Smith to create different surfaces on the glass. Jan also employs the use of patina, chemical formulation which changes the colour of the sterling silver to brown, blue and black tones.