Photo credits: Lisa Walker. Some images have been reproduced without permission from ‘LISA WALKER Unwearable’ (Darling Publications, Cologne, 2008), one was appropriated from Masterworks Gallery.
It is so hard to write about your super hero without sounding like a stalker so I will use this accolade to sum it up:
Lisa Walker is the current Francoise van den Bosch Award recipient, which is the contemporary jewellery equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Pretty good then.
She has an exciting approach to making jewellery and has made many many wonderful things – many of them unwearable – which is a good thing. I love the freedom she has to make whatever she wants out of whatever material catches her eye. I love her use of colour and the way she uses glue, how she makes rules and breaks rules. I love her fearlessness, sense of humour and the snippets of wisdom in her quotes.
My favorite Lisa Walker pieces are often the most simple readymades. Like a bit of green hose with a safety pin on it that still had grime inside it and the big old black plastic comb with her name scratched on it, attached to a plated cord. And the little clear plastic container inscribed “In here is a fart and a pearl”. Sheer brilliance! I am also a sucker for anything she has made with googley eyes.
Apart from being big and loud and colourful, our work is not aesthetically similar but I am hoping that some of her attitude will rub off on me. I have previously made some work in direct response to things I have heard her talk about or things I have seen in her books and in one instance to a box she sent her work in, however, I do not want to explore imitation in HandSHAKE.
For the duration of this project I intend to explore some of her processes and apply them to and with my usual materials – silicone and urethane – to see what happens. I expect my experiments may bring about some huge shifts in my work. Bloody exciting.
handshakejewellery.com 