scope series

The Scope Series calls attention to the function of jewelry through implied utility.  This body of work visually fuses a traditional jewelry format – the necklace, and a functional object that does not serve as adornment – the stethoscope.  My intent in combining something that we usually think of as purely decorative with a familiar functional object is to bring into question how jewelry functions culturally and socially.  The material, black foam rubber, lends an ephemeral quality to the work, and points to an idea of a template, a shadow of a hybrid object.  These objects are ideas, contemplations, and ways of thinking about the function of jewelry that signal adornment and function at the same time, encouraging reconsideration of the function of jewelry.  The different configurations take on a variety of forms that allude to functional objects and suggest communicative functions.  The variations are also aestheticising how a non-decorative object, such as a stethoscope, is worn on the body; another inversion that transforms non-decorative into decorative.

9 images, 2005