Intellectual cross-pollination is common in the art world. It seems perfectly natural to me to take a photo and turn it into a piece of jewelry, and I expect at some point a piece of jewelry will inspire a photo or two. Today, I was working with a very direct transfer from one medium to another. I took a photo I had taken of a pair of roses, printed it on handmade paper with flower petal inclusions, cropped out two small pieces and inserted them into a pair of pre-made frame pendants to create a pair of earrings. Here is a picture of the earrings resting on the photo from which they were cropped.
Later, while I was browsing through the shops of a couple of my fellow members in the JCUiN guild on
ArtFire, I was interested to see a couple of pieces that could almost have been the result of a similar cross-pollination. The first pair below is a wonderful necklace by
Shadow Dog Designs next to a photo I took of Waimea Canyon on Kauai. When I saw the necklace, I was immediately reminded of Waimea Canyon. "Waimea" means "red" and refers to the vivid red of the dirt on Kauai. In her description of the necklace, Catherine of Shadow Dog has this to say:
"This handmade, one of a kind (OOAK) necklace was inspired by a recent trip to Alice Springs, smack dab in the middle of the Red Centre of Australia. The red, gold and gray colors of the Noreena jasper is very reminiscent of the colors of the stones and soil of the Red Centre. In fact, after doing some research about Noreena jasper, I found it comes from the Pilbara region of Western Australia. No wonder it radiated Australia to me!"
The second pair of images are both from a studio called
Kindred Images and Creations on ArtFire. The first is a photo of a storm front off the coast of Maine. The second is a necklace made with rainbow fluorite. When I saw the photo, it reminded me of some labradorite I purchased recently. Then I saw the fluorite necklace, which has some of the same qualities. So I Googled both minerals to see if there was a relationship. Turns out both contain calcium. And labradorite is named for Labrador, Canada which is an area in Canada also on the Eastern seaboard, though far north of Maine. The name "fluorite" on the other hand, comes from the Latin
fluo, meaning "to flow." It turns out it is also the state mineral of my home state of Illinois, which used to be the largest producer of the mineral in the US. Which makes sense, because it is often found in limestone. Now, one of the largest deposits in North America is found in Newfoundland, Canada which is right next door to Labrador. So we've gone full circle.
Well, I hope everyone feels sufficiently pollinated for today!
3 comments:
What a fascinating blog posting - lots to think about! Love the term "cross-pollination" - had never looked at art that way but it is sooooo true! So many of my designs are inspired by Nature. I want to thank you for including my necklace "Red Centre", one of my favorite pieces because it is a true cross-pollination of ideas, longings and colors :) ... Catherine (ShadowDogDesigns)
Love the mini geology lesson! Thank you for featuring my shop!
I've often contemplated this very thing but never put it in to words. We all take little bits and pieces from everything we see and do, it's part of our style. Everybody sees things in a slightly different light. You show that photo that you created earrings out of, I only just yesterday picked up this greeting card I've had for years because I love the flowers on it and decided I was going to do just that with it, make a pair of earrings using resin which I've been wanting to do for a long time. Thank you! Sorry for the VERY LONG comment lol!!
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