Auli Laitinen
My immediate thoughts are that the ethical dilemmas always are the most interesting ones. Those questions holds so many of the ingredients that are forming us as human beings. And there is no end to it either, the questions needs to be asked and responded to, over and over again.
For exemple, I am not using very much gold in my work but with the recent years awareness of environmental issues and war financing mining I don’t think I could make work without addressing the issue somehow. I would like to use certificately assured gold because it wouldn’t be coherent with my way of working to do otherwise. I have not thought about it very much before but if I think about how I work I use and count in a lot of meaning and values in the materials I use so it would be kind of illogical to ignore this information. The same way I “use” the idea and image of the tie as a mainly masculine attribute transferred by the tie fabric and patterns in some of my works, I might have to acknowledge that gold carries attributes that are heavier than the conventional idea of status and wealth…
I think that the different meanings of shading you mention goes very well with the theme of our blog. All connecting words, shattering, nuances and shading are saying something about the conditions of a migrant, good or bad! They can represent different angels of finding yourself in a new culture, understanding it and maybe longing to be understood within it.
When I say that wearability is intrinsic to how I work with my jewellery it is because it says so much about the frame I am working within. To picture a person wearing the jewellery and the reactions towards or with that person…Most of all it is how I read jewellery, who wears it? where? Do I want to wear it? And most important of all is the connotation of jewellery being a beautifying object, something that the wearer is proud of or somehow eager to show to others. This idea is something I very much count on while working. I am counting on that a wiever always has it in the back of hers/his mind when looking at jewellery. I do NOT mean that jewellery has to contain any of these qualities/ideas, only that they are constituting the back drop to how we read the work. That our concept of beauty and status differs between cultures is no news therefore I cannot claim another frame than the western world, specificly the north European one…
Considering what I just wrote there will always be a problem for a wearer to wear a problem! That is exactly the reason why I continue to work within the field of jewellery, because this is such a challenge. How can I part from an issue that is problematic and make it in to something a person wants to wear?
I think I will stop here for now and await your comment, looking forward!
Auli
Hi Alejandra!
Here is a typical view of Finland!
Space all around. horizontal and vertical. silence and sounds. sounds inside and outside. hibernation.
hug.
mia.
Sebastian Buescher
Hi Dani.
Nice photos and thoughts. I like your comment on what the mirror means to you: Mix of identities and permanent change. What is funny is that our mood also affects what we see in ourselves when we look into a mirror, in the same way that our moods (emotions) affect how we see everything else; always changing. I am reflecting now.
Lately I have been learning about the ego and how it exists within us, distorting our views and whispering endless thoughts and comments in our minds (judging, labeling, weighing, wanting, needing, evaluating, hating, loving, etc). The moods within us change constantly because our egos constantly change their minds. I am also conducting an experiment with myself at the moment called ‘Living in The Now’, in other words being where I am and not thinking or being in the thoughts in my head. Interesting so far. I have no real expectations here.
The mirror (now that I reflected) is needed primarily by the ego. I am not sure why I wrote this. I am not even sure if it true or false, but somehow it makes sense to me. Or perhaps I ought to rephrase the sentence above: The mirror, depending on how much it is used, is needed primarily by the ego. I like mirrors because they represent light and illusion to me. I am continuously drawn into this illusion, it tricks me into believing it. I also think that mirrors separate two worlds, that of being and that of doing. I am the life that animates me, not that which I see reflected in a mirror (but that is who I think I am – the physical form). The mirror then is a gateway into the illusion or into the truth!
My work has always revolved around themes such as the escape from reality, energy within objects, absurdity, nonsense, etc. The mirror seems to encapsulate all of these themes somehow………….
Hi Andrea
1_These days I have been helping my parents to move to a new flat. I have been thinking about my experience in Barcelona. Moving from one flat to another, finding on the way people from all everywhere. Making friends and loosing them.
Drawing my journey on the pavement. Keeping all my life into boxes. Scattering my possessions through the city. Traveling? Migrating?
2_Traveling usually isn’t very productive, but very inspiring.
I use to travel with my copybooks and watercolors……and then I “translate” those drawings into pieces. As the photograph I include in this post.
Of course, the purpose of traveling is being out from our daily routine, and we don’t have our tools with us, but we have cameras, pencils and memories.
It’s that so obvious?
Francisca Kweitel
constellation. soda bottle caps on street.
Dani Soter
microcosm in the car carpet…
Dani Soter
Oi Sebastián!
I’ve been thinking a lot about what the mirror means to me. I came to a ( near) conclusion that, ultimately, what I like in the mirror is that it can reflect another one in me and I can complete this other one with an other part of me. It’s a mix of identities and a permanent change.
“I is another,” as Rimbaud would say.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
This picture below makes reference to the picture you sent.
I liked very much these fluid mirrors on the floor.
For me, the integration / adaptation is much like this picture.
um abraço!
Alejandra Solar
Hi Mia!!!!!!!
The idea of sending us images everyday sound great to me, I don’t know if every day I’ll be able to conect but I’ll try.
Here I want to show you one of my favorite things, well I do have lots of favorite things to eat that I can’t find here, But this is very special, everytime I go back to my country is the first thing that get, mmmm!!!!!! CHICHARRON with lots of lemon and lots of salsa.
I’m back in Barcelona, seems like Munich took all the sun, yesterday was even colder than Luxembourg.
What did you decide about Koru, are you going?
Hugs
Alejandra
Carla Castiago
From there, after six days and seven nights, you arrive at Zobeide, the white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as in a skein. They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream. They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city; she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked. They dreamed of pursuing her. As they twisted and turned, each of them lost her. After the dream, they set out in search of that city; they never found it, but they found one another; they decided to build a city like the one in the dream. In laying out the streets, each followed the course of his pursuit; at the spot where they had lost the fugitive’s trail, they arranged spaces and walls differently from the dream, so she would be unable to escape again.
This was the city of Zobeide, where they settled, waiting for that scene to be repeated one night. None of them, asleep or awake, ever saw the woman again. The city’s streets were streets where they went to work every day, with no link any more to the dreamed chase. Which, for that matter, had long been forgotten.
New men arrived from other lands, having had a dream like theirs, and in the city of Zobeide, they recognized something from the streets of the dream, and they changed the positions of arcades and stairways to resemble more closely the path of the pursued woman and so, at the spot where she had vanished, there would remain no avenue of escape.
The first to arrive could not understand what drew these people to Zobeide, this ugly city, this trap.
In: Invisible cities, Italo Calvino
Hi Alejandra!
this writing seems so strange to me. to start to tell you about my thought…
last picture I was able to load…the HUGE one was and image of the fantastic salmiakki…salty candy!
that makes you (me!) feel soo satisfied afterwards…something you (me!) desire much!
and I like that you mailed me the image you had seen…
shall we make a plan that everyday we sent an image?
discuss then or later about it?
what do you say?
hey we have full sunshine in Munich skyline!
sooo great!
hug.
 Hello everybody!!!!
We are the team of La Refaccionaria Gallery from Mexico.
La Refaccionaria, Art & Contemporary Design, have as s goal the creation of a space that makes easy the encounter of the contemporary art that its taking place in Mexico with diverse public either in Mexico and, abroad. In October of 2005, It opens its doors, adding itself to the artistic atmosphere generated in the city, the selection of this artists in the historical center of Mexico City includes several generations wich pays the conditions so that receiving, those who habitually do not coexist to each other, they tie.
Some others of its strategies have been the organization of exhibitions beyond their space bucket, the artistic object and the use of diverse supports.
Among its interests, there is the incorporation of other disciplines as design, the architecture, and the functional object, to artists project for wich it counts on with Edgardo Ganado Kim, resident curator and Amalia Ortiz like the director.
For La Refaccionaria, is amazing to participate in a big project like Otro Diseño, not only by the idea of taking a project like jewelry design (the topic is new to us) but by the idea of managing of collective work of different designers with the work of our artists represented.
We hope that the interaction that emerges from this time with the final outcome in the next 2010 be learning and interdisciplinary collaboration for each of us.
By the time we left but next days we will be talking to our artists and projects forward in the space.
If you wish to visit the gallery site can access: http://www.larefaccionariagaleria.com
greetings!
Francisca Kweitel
house/body, now i am looking in, and both are the same.
light comes from within the body?
Francisca Kweitel
first. congratulation because your exhibition!
i’d like the text where tel something like… footprints being left layer upon layer as snow. my memory is very chaotic and each layer seems to be covering the previous! i would like to think i can go up layers to remember what was and makes what is today, be/is.
i’m sending you this picture because i believe this image talk about footprints and especially, absence (like your work).
like i’d tell you (the comment in your pictures), buenos aires is very crowded, we don’t have a lot empety spaces. this is one of the reasons because i immerse myself in my own, looking for a quiet space.
Hi Gemma,
Since the start of the “Walking the Gray Area” blog a lot of text, information, coments and pictures have been published and exchanged. Unfortunately I haven’t been very active in keeping up with all that information which I know it is a pity! At the moment I am very busy with many projects and it is dificult for me to react and digest information from so many artists.
What I would like to do and I hope we can manage is to keep (with you) a personal dialogue so that we get to know one another.
I must confess that I know very little about your work and even less about yourself but I am curious about you as creator and as a person.
Today I have googled your name on the internet and it was very nice to see images of your work. I like your pieces very much, they are very beautifull and I love the way you use materials that are not very much related to tradicional jewellery. I also heard that you are staying at the moment at Cambrook University (USA.) and I am curious to know what you are making at the moment. Please let me know??
I also want to use this oportunity to tell you something about myself and my work.
I lived in Brasil until 1987. From 1988 until 1991 I lived in Boston and there I took several classes (in Painting, Printmaking and art theory) at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. Living in Boston meant a lot to me and I was very happy there. For the first time I was living very far away from my family and that gave me a great feeling of freendom and power.
In 1991 I went back to Brasil for 6 months and then I spent a year traveling through Europe and hoping to find a place where I could live and start a new life.
After visiting many cities I went to Amsterdan for a weekend and there I have met and fallen in love with Dennis and for that very important reason I have been living here since 1992.
In Amsterdan I wanted to go back to School and I decided to enroll myself at the Rietveld Academy and somehow I got atracted to the the jewellery department where I graduated in 2000.
I have never really made jewellery in the tradicional sense of the word and I am not interested in making things that you can easily wear. What I am interested is in making objects/installations which have a close relation with the body and I am always trying to find different ways and materials to represent the body.
At he moment I am making a big installation ‘Unveil’ which will be presented in New York from 13 October at the Museum of Arts and Design-MAD part of the exhibition “Slash: Paper under the Knife”.
The work consists of a wall (300 cm x 300cm) with garlands, ribbons and crowns covered with small flowers made from ‘medicine leaflets information to use’.
In front of this field of flowers hangs a curtain (also 300 cm x 300 cm) of chains also made from the ‘medicine leaflets’.
Since 2 years ago I have been collecting those ‘medicine leaflets” from friends, friends of friends, family menbers, lovers and acquaintances. I am very fond and proud of this work which tells so much about the fragility of the human body.
I send you now an image of the work so that you can have an idea of it.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely, Célio Braga
Let him see therein an infinity of universes, each of which has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as the visible world; in each earth, animals, and in the last mites, in which he will find again all that the first had, finding still in these others the same thing without end and without cessation. Let him lose himself in wonders as amazing in their littleness as the others in their vastness.
Blaise Pascal remarked of the sights revealed under the lens of a microscope
 collage, LH 2008
Hi everybody,
I’ve updated my site with a selection of photos thinking in this project and reflecting upon ‘transition’. You’re are invited to visit http://www.leonorhipolito.com
Nelli Tanner
Sorry for my silence.
Busy with exhibition in Amsterdam, if you want to have a look www.galerierobkoudijs.nl
But you were on my mind while
walking the streets of Amsterdam.
Familiar surrounding and still not.
Crowded streets.
Looking for empty spaces.
Observations of structures, shapes and dark wood.
Looking at characters of things and materials.
Camouflage cats in the shop window.
Something to bring with me to Finland.
Things I miss when I’m not in Amsterdam.
Here in Finland where distances can be long
and empty space is everywhere
The images are now on my working table.
Beginning?
What do you see in the photos Francisca?
Dani Soter
 Hello, Sebastián!
I need to think about all this…
The mirror gives the reality of an inverted image and symbolizes the reciprocity of consciences …
……..
be back soon … need to reflect …
It will be a pleasure collaborating with you on the theme of immigration. In my life I have been in contact change of place and environment.
You are living in one of the largest cities of the world, and I am living in one of the smallest countries of the world.
I feel we would benefit by sending small (inexpensive) objects by post, but I also still need to find out how to post photos.
How would you like to proceed? Cars? Is that because there are more than a million cars running through your city constantly?
ANTECEDENTES It will be a pleasure collaborating with you on the theme of immigration. In my life I have been in contact change of place and environment.
You are living in one of the largest cities of the world, and I am living in one of the smallest countries of the world.
I feel we would benefit by sending small (inexpensive) objects by post, but I also still need to find out how to post photos.
How would you like to proceed? Cars? Is that because there are more than a million cars running through your city constantly?
Francisca Kweitel
Limits. Doors that open and close. Fluids flowing and not.
Communication with the outside from within.
Francisca Kweitel
open doors. to share culture. to communicate-community. natural.
Hola Dani, Sebastian!
It is great to see you back and kicking!
I have this hate-love relation with mirrors. They can be so ugly and kitschy or they can be fun and cool… I love to look at a good mirror, but I never liked looking at myself on one…
I have recently came upon a great mirror by the Lithuanian designer Neringa Vasiliauskaite, the Plashes Mirror:
I love how she uses this really antique mirror and gives it a minimal, wierd shape, according to Neringa: like the puddles which every one of us were wading in on childhood rainy days.
Have a happy Sunday!
Sebastian Buescher
Hola Dani!
Now you definitely confirmed my personal feelings of us being in sync on a lot of things, which is good. I agree with your words about the mirror: cold, harsh, shiny, full of vanity and narcissism, yet also fragile (glass), that can esily cut you when it is broken. The words ‘dangerous’ and ‘beauty’ come to mind somehow, enbaling us, or tricking us, to get trapped by our own reflection, the danger being, like Narcissus, that we can drown in our own image, or illusion. I look at mirrors, especially broken mirrors, and see cracks in the surface of reality, small pockets that have opened up (the separation between two supposed worlds or realities). What do you think?
………..more later
Dani Soter
Hello Sebastian!
I’m so glad to get you back here with a beautiful open door. I’m getting in. I already entered and I feel good.
In fact I think we have many ideas in common and I’m enjoying a lot our meeting. Our waves are really tuned … This is so rare! After all we know little of each other and this is of no importance because our thoughts are knowing.
I have a great feeling to be already at work with you. I have thought about how to implement our ideas.
For now all the photos that I sent are mine. The foetus is, in fact, an appropriation of a famous photo of Lennart Nillson (1973). It is part of a serie where I appropriate an already existing pictures. I put the planets and rocket paper on it and then I re-photographed. It is a personal view of the universe, as if I were watching the world as if I were a human satellite.
I haven’t spoken of mirror randomly. There is a material that I don’t like for its arrogant coldness (though I like its fragility), but I love the concept precisely because everything you mentioned: reflection, time, illusion, reality, unreality. Alice in Wonderland has always been a reference for me and this photograph of Penone always impressed me!
I like the idea of working on top of these issues, which are common ground for both of us. Each of us makes his own experiences. Once we have something (it can be everything: design, model, collage, materials that inspire us, or even a jewel) we can show it and go on with our dialogue. Then we think together about how these early ideas can evolve. What do you think of this?
My great pleasure with jewelry is all the creative and experimental process. I’m slow to material achievements. Thought is faster …
abraço
Dani
Karin Seufert
Hello dear Maria,
I’m so happy to hear from you and that everything is fine with you. I started to be a bit worried because there was no sign of life yet but now I understand why and the reason is great!!!
Congratulations and I hope that you will feel fantastic asap!
So this `big project´ next to the exhibition will influence your work too and … the date will be a bit the same I guess?
Columbia seems to be such an interesting and beautiful country! I just had a look at the movie you advised. What a pity that I haven’t been there yet, but who knows what the future will bring. I love traveling like you do! Over 5,5 weeks I’m going to Brazil and I’m looking forwards to this journey a lot. It’s my 4th time there and I really like it. Till now it is the only South American country I have been to, so I’m very curious to hear more about Columbia from you.
What really fascinates me in South America is the color-diversity. We also have colors here but we use them different. There is a wide range here too and so as Valeria mentioned specially the change now during the fall season is incredible, but it is different. I remember I saw a necklace from you in the Lark-books-series about plastic, which was quite colorful. Is it important to you to use colors?
I will send a photo of a work-in-progress I started with last year in Göteborg, which was inspired by a handcraft-piece I saw in Brazil.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Warm regards, Karin
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