ARTIST STATEMENT

Everything is socially constructed. We recognize objects through our previous experience with similar shapes and contexts. When we see a long round handle with a wide, flat, square shape, we recognize a spatula. When we see many small pieces of similar material, shape and color, strung together by a thread, we recognize a beaded necklace. Our perception is trained by cultural and material traditions.

I use wooden tableware as material for jewelry. These pieces have two lives. When they lie quietly on the table, we recognize the spatula. While the cut lines and thread give hints to something more, we don’t see the necklace. As soon as we pick them up, the image of a spatula collapses into a beaded necklace – we can no longer discern the spatula from the beads. These objects are, by formal definition, spatulas as well as necklaces. As they shift from tableware to wearables, they undergo a change in relationship to the human body and role in our daily life, which brings the acts of cooking and eating together with the associated preciousness of jewelry. This transformation between their two states of being reveals how we perceive objects through visual signifiers. Their dual identity challenges the idea of a singular fixed reality.