Emily Bhargava

1.25″ x 1.25″, glass

A very dear friend of mine passed away recently.  She was a mosaic artist who collected wonderful tesserae, and I made this pendant out of pieces from her collection.  While this doesn’t look anything like her work, I know that by using her materials this piece will make me think of her every time I see the moon.

1″ diameter, found objects

This week was my birthday, and I was so busy that I barely had a chance to pause to take a breath (or post a pendant), but being celebrated did make me take a few hours out to enjoy the people around me and to think about the passing year. This design made from seeds and clay beads is meant to reflect a calendar, with a colored bead marking each season of the year.

1″ x 2″ glass and found objects

This pendant is a bit of a mish-mash with pieces of technology, beads, broken glass and pieces from polymer clay canes that I made when I was a child.  If “the blues” are things that make us sad, I like the idea of taking them all and forcing them into an itsy-bitsy frame where somehow, as a collection, they take on a new beauty.

1″ x 2″, glass and found objects

As a nod to Thanksgiving, this pendant is one of a series that includes pieces of glass from a plate with the image of the brilliantly-colored turkey, the peacock.  A sign of welcome in some parts of the world, peacocks remind me of the irony that our country celebrates one immigration story while at the same time making so many new immigrants feel unwelcome.

1″x 2″, found objects

This piece has a very different feel than the last few that I’ve made.  A response to another touching poem that will be part of a collaborative exhibit in March, the pendant explores the imagery, the cadence and the facade of joy that nursery rhymes carry.

1″x1″, glass and found objects

One more pendant grew from this year’s Diwali sweets. The back side of glass that’s pressed with foil looks just like Indian burfi  with silver foil on top.  Cut into a diamond just like a burfi, this pendant will make me hungry every time I see it.

1″x 2″, found objects

Patina is the change on the surface of metal that shows its age. It can become darker, irregular and more colorful as it interacts with the chemicals around it. I’ve been watching how humans age lately, and thinking about how we also become more irregular and colorful over time. This pendant is a commentary on the passing of time that combines intentionally patinated metal, shiny beads that will never show their age, and antique watch parts, dark with patina.

1″x1″, glass and found objects

Sometimes the Diwali outfits at family celebrations are all about color, but this year they were all about shine. A little bit of metallic thread, a shiny mirror, a lot of rhinestones…and then simple fabric becomes amazing.  This pendant is about creating shine and eye-catching sophistication from less-than-perfect materials.

Welding doesn’t exactly lend itself to small jewelry work, but at an amazing welding class last week at Snow Farm with James Kitchen I salvaged these bits from the scrap pile and turned them into a pendant when I got home.

Glass, 1″x 2″

In the second of my poem-inspired pendants, here is “the tree, against the backdrop of the sky”.  You’ll have to come to our January opening to see the rest of the beautiful and moving poem.  I created the form of a tree by breaking a thick, frosted, mirror-backed piece of glass along the lines of a trunk, branches and roots.  The deep cracks are visible through the glass from many angles giving depth to what would otherwise be a flat design.  The colors and textures of the pendant sky, like the real sky, change as the light changes.

1″ h, 3/4″ w, found objects

I found a bug (might have been a bee but it was black and very large) dead on the path that we were walking along.  It’s wings were iridescent, with all the colors of the rainbow.  I took the wings to find them a new home in this pendant.  Looking at the size of the wings makes me think about the enormous distance that we flew to get here.  Imagine flying across oceans and continents on wings this size!

1″x 2″, found objects

It seems strange that even being here in India, where the colors are intensely bright and varied, my pendants have been subdued.  But the flavors are definitely not subdued.  There’s such an amazing array of spices that nothing ever tastes dull, except, of course, the food that we cook ourselves.  This pendants uses beans, mustard seed and cumin seed to make a dense (and delicious) pattern.

1″ x 1.5″, glass and found objects

After the British conquered India, Hyderabad remained an independent princely state. It wasn’t until 1948 that Hyderabad became part of India.  Walking through the streets of the bazaar that surrounds the now empty Chowmahalla palace, the colors and sequins and beads and sounds are brilliant and somewhat overwhelming.  The stalls of glittery border ribbon and clothes call your attention, but among the stalls was a man quietly selling old coins, including this coin from the Hyderabadi princely state. In this pendant the coin and its history are central to design, lending a color scheme and guiding the form, but the glitter and gleam of the beads that surround it threaten to overwhelm it.  Like looking for the older history amidst the hustle and bustle and color of present-day Hyderabad, you have to look closely.

1″ x 1.5″, found objects

A swim in Lake Dennison helped break the heat yesterday, and at the bottom of the lake was a beautiful clam shell with a big hole through one side. The clam was missing, but little fish were still swarming to eat the small bits of meat that were left inside.  Once it had been cleaned by the little fish I took it home to enjoy.  I always feel like I’m on a treasure hunt at the beach.  With this pendant I’ve taken the lake’s treasure and turned it into my own. The design is also a mosaic nod to the long tradition of Wampum in Massachusetts.  

1″x 2″, beads and found objects

It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea of things that are super small or super large.  I had a conversation with my daughter yesterday about the idea of atoms.  She said “you can’t kiss an atom because it’s teeny tiny” and then proceeded to kiss her hand, saying “I’m kissing lots of atoms”. We talked briefly about the size of the universe, but moved quickly on to people sizes, a relatively small range of tall people and short people.  This pendant is my nod to our imaginary travel through scales. If I were on the Magic School Bus, maybe kissing an atom would look something like this.

The littlest kids in my family spent the last week collecting treasures in every corner of Toconic state park, and I did too.  This is made from branches, stones and pieces of slag, a blue glass that’s a by-product of the iron smelting that used to be done in the region.

1″ diameter, found objects

I’m starting a new series of pendants, about travel, exploration, and the wonderful things that you can find along the way.  This is the first, a compass that will guide me.  Now, without any actual cardinal directions or a needle, the path it takes me on is going to be a winding road.  Come along for the ride!

It’s been a whole year. A pendant each week for a year, exploring the meaning of health, the components of health, and the practical things that make me feel healthy.  From ice cream to organization, they’ve been varied.  Above all, I’ve confirmed that making things is good for me.  The act of transforming one thing into another, the chance to play with ideas, and the calm and concentration that making each pendant required was healthy.  At the center of this pendant is the word “make”. It’s a command, a reminder.

Each of this year’s pendants has been a small statement and a short exploration that may grow into a larger work over time.  Now I have to decide what next year’s making project will be…

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.