Design research Jewlery project 2

The essence of the project is a vessel that is a wearable pendant. When I started this process I started by thinking about what I would want a wearable vessel to hold for me. I would want it to hold something precious. Something dear. Something that in my worst of moments I could look at and it would bring me to a happy place. I then thought about my happiest of moments. This past summer my boyfriend and I spent a week in Groton Long Point CT. One of the best things about Groton was that we stayed at a house that was practically on the beach. From every window in the front of the house (and there were a lot) you saw the beach. But what made that view better than every other beach I have been to was the quiet sense of community and home. It was not the neon party town of Ocean City, nor the foreign tropical shores I had traveled to. I am a beach girl, it stirs my soul, and this trip in particular bonded me to another human being in a way I will never forget. So I wanted to hold that with me. I thought about they types of vessels at the beach. A lot of them (seashells, sea life, sandcastles and pails, etc.) are cliche' and cute. The beach is a place a lot of people love and these themes have been done a thousand times. Then it came to me. Every morning I stood in the doorway and looked at the view. The doorway was the vessel that held me in Groton. I would use that shape as my die form. So I looked a the shapes that doors and window come in. I know that Anderson is a company that makes windows and doors so I checked out their site and began sketching. www.andersenwindows.com I showed those sketches in class and something Jan said stuck with me, "It looks like the window company is funding Anna's project." That hit home because I was trying to stay away from the cliche'. So I went back to the sketching and began going through my images of Groton and I googled Groton and went through the images to bring the memories closer. I kept the window silouette for my die but the piercing pattern on the front is now not going to be so literal as to depict a window. I changed the piereced pattern to something more abstract. I also thought about the eye as the window to the soul and how if you turned my die form side ways it looks like half of an eye.http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=eye%20as%20window%20to%20soul&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Groton Long point: the view every morning.










I also really wanted to combine mediums in this project. Black and white photography is one of my favorite mediums. I took a lot of black and white photos while in Groton. I wanted to use a product called Liquid Light and contact printing and place an image from a black and white negative with a view like this inside of the pendant. I don't know now between the hinge making and the clasps if I am going to have time for this process in addtion to finising the piece. I did alot of research though on Liquid Light and how to use it. You can use it on a wide variety of materials to put prints on. Some useful sites were:
http://www.alternativephotography.com/process_liquidlight.html

http://www.rockaloid.com/

http://www.merrillphoto.com/Projects.htm