Art and Design Portfolio

Jewellery

These rings were my first experiments with the lost-wax casting process. Each one was hand-carved in wax, then cast, and then polished and finished using various techniques. Each one is inspired by forms in nature: rough crystal, octopus tentacles, and the Bass Rock off the coast of North Berwick on the east coast of Scotland.

As a student at the City of Glasgow College, I made this piece by hand to the project brief to create a wearable container inspired by the concept of "reliquary." The idea for this pendant originates from a tomb I came across at Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. It caught my eye due to the wilting rose that had been hung on the cast-iron door: this classic symbol of death, adorned with a universal image of beauty in the process of dying, struck my heart. This reliquary contains the ashes of my cat Romeo, who passed a few years ago after nearly 20 years with me.

Bringing together my passions for miniatures and jewellery, I was able to practice several new skills in creating these three pieces of miniature cookware. Handcrafted by me, under the tutelage of several wonderful instructors at Vanilla Ink Jewellery School, these pieces employ such skills as riveting, enamelling, wax-carving and sand-casting, among others.

My first foray into jewellery was in 2017, when I made these silver rings during two workshops with a local artist in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The amethyst rings use stones I found in my grandparents' house, and I designed each one for a bridesmaid in my wedding.

I made this heart-shaped locket during a one-week intensive course at the Haute École de Joaillerie in Paris in autumn 2020. The assignment was to create a rounded, heart-shaped locket with a motif of my own design. Through this process I practiced sawing, filing, soldering, annealing, doming, and polishing (I chose to create a matte finish).

To the right is a selection of stone settings I did during another workshop at the Haute École de Joaillerie.

Sculpture (CC Minis)

During the winter of 2020 during a lockdown related to the coronavirus pandemic, just after my jewellery workshops at the Haute École de Joaillerie, I wanted to continue practicing my fine motor skills while at home. So I started learning how to make miniature food sculptures from clay and fell in love with the process. Each piece requires planning, colour-mixing, texturing and shaping using different tools, shading with pastels and paint, and often multiple phases of construction. More recently I started experimenting with creating jewellery pieces from my miniature sculptures. You can see more of my miniature work here.

Painting and Drawing

A sample of my watercolour work, based on pastries I have enjoyed in Paris.