Monthly Archives: March 2019

1”x2”, stone and glass

Every corner of the city has police directing traffic and half the streets are closed off to make space for construction of new train stations.  It feels chaotic and hard to get from place to place.  But at the same time I’m forced to explore new parts of the city and look around as I drive down streets I’ve never traveled.  The detours will take more time, but maybe they’ll bring me somewhere exciting.  This pendant uses stones to create a long, winding barrier. The smooth surfaces around them, made of iridized glass, are the exciting potential of the unexplored.

2”x1”, found objects

Music flows through our days.  Every person in our family uses music in a different way, listening, playing, singing, dancing to it, drawing it.  There’s a beauty in the music and all of the connections, release and expression that it allows, but for me there’s also a beauty in the silence that follows.  This pendant captures both the music, through chain and antique watch parts that suggest the form of a guitar, and also the silence, through dark spaces in between the elements.

1″x1″, paper

Maybe it’s not a mosaic, but it’s still a health pendant…

Literacy and the impact that it has on health has been poking its head out again and again this week. I talked to a class about political murals and the way they’re designed to be “read” quickly and easily by using symbols instead of letters, I thought about the work I did at La Alianza Hispana on health literacy and the drawings I made in Guatemala to help low-literacy teachers collect data about their preschool students’ health.  All the while I’ve been watching my 4 year-old begin to piece together letters and connect sounds to each one.  He’s so lucky to have the time and the support to turn his curiosity into strong reading skills.  The pendant is made from a hologram of letters cut from the front of an old brochure.  The photo doesn’t do it justice, but different letters appear as the hologram turns and catches the light in new ways.

1”x.5”, vitreous glass tile

In honor of tonight’s display of breast-pumping photos and stories at Somerville city hall I’ve made this breast-like pendant.  Milk is sustenance.  Milk is life. Milk is hard to produce (I can tell you I needed a LOT of donuts each day that I was lactating) and hard to store.  And we don’t talk about it enough.  There’s still a long way to go before working women in the U.S. have the support, space, time and encouragement that they need to continue to breastfeed after returning to their jobs.

1”x .5”, found objects

It might seem like sadness couldn’t be part of health, but every emotion has a flip-side, and feeling them all is healthy.  This pendant is shaped like a tear, and the green ceramic tile that sits at its point echoes the same form.  With beads placed in lines that sweep away from the tile’s point, the design takes on an art nouveau quality.  Beauty in sadness.