Alicia's jewellery Conceptual and Contemporary Jewellery
I am currently studying in my second year of an Integrated Crafts Degree at South Devon College, I specialise in metal but throw in a hefty amount of slip-cast ceramics into my work. I intend to go on to complete my Ba honours at Truro College on the Silver-smithing and Jewellery course. My work has several underpinned issues relating to feminism, it expresses the pressure and strain women are under to become and remain beautiful for the duration of their lives. It shows how throughout history; social etiquette and fashion (such as painful corsets and chastity belts) has created the glass ceiling that exists today. I create delicate, lacy ceramic and pewter jewellery with found pieces of pottery (dug up by myself from my Grand father's garden) and incorporate them into the metal's surface. My work symbolises the brittleness of beauty, that thin line of what is and isn't beautiful and how breakable it can be, showing how trapping and constricting beauty can be. Think about it, dieting, waxing, plucking, wearing heels, surgery all these things painful and uncomfortable in some way yet we endure all of this and sometimes more 'to become more beautiful' beauty has become a cult, beauty is no longer natural. My hope is that I unveil two sides of the women who wear my work, the internally beautiful and delicate side (the ceramic) with the confident secret powerful side (the pewter) combining the two creates a metaphor of the magnificently complex and wonderful creatures we all are. My work allows what is naturally beautiful within each of our unique minds and personalities to shine out and show the rest of the world how amazing every woman can be.