What Remains

What Remains is metal-based jewellery that focuses on crystal growth as a metaphor for an intense desire to reach an unattainable perfection, inevitability resulting in failure.

Through the union of two separate entities, bone and crystal, I reveal how similar chemical actions cause drastically different results. Obsessed with the desire to obtain superiority, the perfectionist strives to be the glittering crystal, but inevitably becomes the bone.  It is the nature of the crystal to recognise failure causing it to be unaware of the astonishing and crucial process of bone formation.  The crystal is blinded by the allure and the attention seeking nature of the lustrous crystalline matter.

By growing my own crystals, I am able to create a polycrystalline structure that is forced to conform into a mould. A single crystal is beautiful, but polycrystalline matter is more delicate and reflective, allowing the material to shimmer. I am using this intentional crystal mass to illustrate the failure to achieve the desired single crystal.

The process of ossification (bone formation) creates crystals of a different kind. My work focuses on the cancelous bones which are often found in the ends of the long bones. These bones are developed by a spongy membrane that forms in a fibrous tissue in the body. Simultaneously, cartilage within this membrane begins to degenerate and calcify which in turn creates bone growth.

In both cases, the crystals grow from a solution of their essential matter as a specific set of circumstances creates a perfectionist.
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It is the crystal’s singular mission to find order in chaos. Amorphous substances are chaotic by nature because they do not have an orderly arrangement of atoms and therefore no definite external structure. The crystal in my analogy develops from an attempt to create order from chaos. The crystal endeavors to control the amorphous substance to create a rigid, perfect, and inflexible form.