Wearable Sculpture
People often ask me what my training was: architect? graphic designer? engineer? I actually started out as a jewelry designer and developed my artistic voice through this medium.
The ideas that I was interested at the jewelry scale are still evident in the sculptures I make today. I created jewelry that was inspired by geometry and architectural forms and started thinking bigger and bigger, eventually transitioning into a sculptor and installation artist. Although the materials are different, the attention to detail and fabrication techniques that I use in my sculpture are the same ones that I use in jewelry but just at a different scale.
Tessellation Constellation, an installation I created for Facebook Austin, is made up of wooden sticks that I assemble with wire to create mesmerizing 3D forms of triangles and squares. A similar technique and design can be found in my Gego Earrings, where simple lines have been linked together to come alive and form 3D geometric shapes.
With the way simple shapes connect and interact, there are a lot of similarities between The Fractal Nature of Things and many of my jewelry designs composed with circular elements.
Kinetic Tessellation Experiment from melissa borrell on Vimeo.
My most recent art ideas involve kinetics, as seen from my work-in-progress installation: Kinetic Tessellation. I’m intrigued by how the shapes change as the installation spinning around. This interest in kinetics has always been with me, even while I was primarily a jewelry designer.
My jewelry pieces, like the Gego earrings and Grid Earrings, are designed to be flexible and can change shape as they’re being worn!
Side by side comparisons of my jewelry and artwork really show how my work has transformed and evolved. I often refer to my jewelry as “wearable sculpture” and love the idea that when I’m wearing my jewelry, I always have a piece of my art with me.