Having the studio open to the public has changed my working process and I have laid the space out to engage the public in an educational way. There are my test pieces and samples of metalworking processes and the visual record of my own work is on the wall with the tests and experiments I am doing now. I also have prototypes of projects I will be doing with schools and projects for families (more about this later). Considering I work on a small jewellery scale I have managed to fill this large room with visual material.
I spent almost a day searching through the V&A sculpture database to find six busts of character that I would like to inhabit my studio and wear the ideas for jewellery I am proposing to make. Of the six beauties I selected, one is a dancer by Canova and two are representations of young Queen Victoria. When I carefully cut the busts from their background I found the negative images perhaps even more interesting.