heidilowejewelry-blog

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Commissioned by a customer who comes from Germany and we make a piece every year based on her trip. #naturejewelry #souvinerdoneright #bestcustomers #thankful #contemporaryjewelry #wearcooljewelry #heidilowejewelry

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Just love this gorgeous necklace by Stephanie Selle!

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Threshold

Courtney Kemp

threshold rubber, sterling silver

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Here is a little sneak peek at our next show opening, Home, on Saturday August 9th!! Featuring work from Karen Vanmol and Courtney Kemp.  Both artists use materials from the home as a starting place from which to make jewelry.  The jewelry will be up at the gallery from August 9th to September 9th. 

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Mini Manis & Champagne Happy Hour!

We will be having a mini manicure and champagne party at the gallery on December 7 from 4 to 7pm to debut Veleta Vancza's new line of luxury nail polish- MINE Luxury Nail Lacquer.  There is 24kt gold, graphite, fine silver, aluminum, gold leaf top coat and more! So many amazing choices to make your nails look better than ever!

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MINE Luxury Nail Lacquer!

So excited!! Next Saturday, Dec. 7th, Veleta Vancza will be at the gallery with an amazing product- MINE Luxury Nail Lacquer...a brand new product making its debut and setting the standard for luxury!

Unearth the most elegant collection of luxury nail lacquer ever created, made for those with the most discriminating standards and taste.

Mine Luxury Nail Lacquer is handmade using the finest raw minerals in the world. Each exclusive color is richly pigmented, hand-mixed and poured into a hand-crafted Austrian crystal bottle. Finished with a custom natural hair brush, application requires only one coat. Designed by a jeweler, Mine is the pinnacle of luxury – a benchmark of quality, style and perfection.

All MINE Luxury Nail Lacquer is 5-Free, meaning it’s free of 5 toxic ingredients found in many nail polishes -- formaldehyde, dibutyl phthalate (DBP), toluene, formaldehyde resin and camphor.

MINE was conceived of and formulated by Veleta Vancza, an artist, goldsmith and enamellist with a background in academia and an innovator in the field of vitreous enamel.  The marriage of her technical skill in metallurgy and innovative thinking in conceptual design has resulted in this truly artful alchemy which is MINE Luxury Nail Lacquer. She has combined a rare technical skill in metallurgy with high concept talent for design. In MINE Luxury Nail lacquer, she has created a hand formulated, luxuriant, and unparalleled product melding nail polish with fine art.

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Katja Toporski

The Crone's Younger Shadow: concrete, silver

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We have a great new show that just opened last Saturday! 

Katja Toporski 

Objects Recovered

"I manipulated the original forms in various ways to add a different aspect to their character that often bears an element of surprise: a dried apple appears in cast concrete, a piece of charcoal takes on a glasslike appearance when presented in optical polyurethane. I pay great attention to the language of the materials they are presented in, their properties, and the mysteries they convey."

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New September Monthly Multiple from Missy Graff!

This series of bracelets, Sockets, has been made for the Heidi Lowe Gallery. These bracelets reference the body's connections, as well as it strengths and limitations. The sockets are each 3D printed and then dyed by hand before being integrated with the sterling silver.  

She also took the time for a short interview to talk about how she got started with jewelry, what inspires her and concepts for future work...

https://heidi-lowe-gallery.squarespace.com/september-monthly-multiple/

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Annette Dam

MISFITS brooch: gold plated silver, oxidized silver, pink opal, polystyrene, paper, lacquer, coral, rosenquartz, elastic. 25x20x3cm

The piece MISFITS has its origins in a general wonder about my own behavior patterns and thought processes as well as a reflection on the values that characterize Western society today.  These thoughts turn into curiosity, inviting a humorous, loving and critical perspective.

The questions to myself go through a process in which intangible thoughts are transformed into physical shape and materials.  A process where ideas get turned, twisted, sorted and inspiration observed, sensed, absorbed.......all these elements recombined into new portable narratives.

The piece is intended to be a humorous commentary on the need to "step out of the wallpaper" and the angst of being just another person in the crowd.

Behind this commentary lies a curiosity about why it is so important, and almost a prestige factor in society, to be totally unique.  What about the honor in being part of the group, contributing and working towards the common purpose? Is the consequence of a society educating children to be individualists with personal opinions and demands that more and more young people are feeling lonely, marginalized and categorized "misfits"?  

The flamingo is a beautiful bird-both in groups and by itself!

*from the accompanying text Suspended In Pink, 2013

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Karen Vanmol

Continuing Habitat: wood, formica, veneer, acrylate, steel pin. mixed techniques. 19x7x3.5cm

Ever since my earlier work, I have found my inspiration in architecture and nature.  Except that everything continues to evolve and change.  A city without a little nature feels claustrophobic for me, but a nature landscape with no sign of humanity is too quiet for me.  Protecting or imitating nature, the use of natural materials in architecture, the restoration of a road surface, accidental strong shapes on a construction site, these things I find very interesting.

On my way through town I always encounter visually interesting images that I use as inspiration in my work.  In addition, there is a certain choice of materials and colours; these are strongly influenced by my childhood.  For example, the memories of necklaces, furniture in different colours or renovations.  I do not think it's important that I tell all about this whole story, the viewer projects his own feelings.

I always start from my sources of inspiration, with these eyes I look around me.  I show viewers how I look at things around me.  But eventually I work with materials, and that provides an additional factor.  I find out what properties they possess and how I can edit and this will count in the final result.

By nature I tend to work clean and delineated, here I work against it, for example by damaging materials.  It gets me out of my comfort zone and it bothers me, but at the same time I want to do it.

*from the accompanying Suspended In Pink, 2013

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Kate Rhode

Bird & Flower Crystal Cuff: polyester resin cast. 12x10x08 cm

As Visual Artist, my artwork and jewellery is jointly inspired by my love of natural history and the ornate decorative arts of the baroque and rococo era.

I began making jewellery after collaborating with the fashion label Romance Was Born on their "Renaissance Dinosaur" collection in 2010.  Since completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2001, I have held several solo exhibitions and been involved in numerous group shows around Australia and internationally.  My artwork is held in a number of public collections including National Gallery of Victoria, Bendigo Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of South Australia.  

*from the accompanying text Suspended in Pink, 2013.

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Christoph Zellweger

Excess 818: blown glass, sandblasted, print on glass. 12x18x9cm

Modern societies have declared war against fat, and at the same time they are increasingly engaging in extreme "fat managing" activities like removing fat through surgical operations.  What happens to the excess of fat, and the related desires and fears that get displaced?

Excess is the word that best defines today's social habits of consumption and "excess" lays at the etymological core of the word luxury.  By inventing the word Excessory, Zellweger establishes a conceptual link to jewelry to point at new rituals and indicators of status, wealth and beauty.

The work "Excess 818" is made up of empty, translucent volumes in blown glass.  The artifact is marked with a weight reference coming from an existing operation protocol.  The figure reports on the surgical "fates of fat" to become a metaphor for emotional absence and loss.

*from the accompanying text Suspended in Pink, 2013

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Lynn Batchelder

How to Build a House (Paint Brooch): House paint, sterling silver. 25 x 10 x 13.5 cm

In this series of work, wood and house paint are my primary material choices. These materials are commonplace, can be found in any local hardware store, and their histories speak to the development of space or place. House paint is ordinary, comes in every color and is used traditionally as an aesthetic or protective covering. I find it interesting to approach a tool or material as if being unaware of its given purpose or how it is intended to be used. In some of the pieces, I choose to use the house paint as a covering, while in others, I employ a drying process in order to use the house paint as the actual material and structure of the object. The original use of the paint is redefined and becomes an invented material with which to build. The linkage system used in my work is inspired by the beams of a house which provide stability. This system of structure is juxtaposed with the playful mobility of the pieces as well as the warm color palette. I seek the moments when a viewer questions what a material could be or engages with the curiosity of a reminiscent form.

*from the accompanying text Suspended In Pink, 2013  

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Lital Mendel

Ephemeral: Cotton thread, silver, glue, metal necklace. 40 x 11 x 7 cm

e-phem-er-al, adjective: Lasting for a very short time.

The shape of the jewelry seems at first to be a whole, coherent construct. A closer look reveals the fragile delicacy of the thread wrapping the air. One careless moment, a single wrong movement, can crumple the jewellery and create crevices. 

The tendency is to offhandedly reject whatever is deemed imperfect, transient or lacking, but the new object is no less whole than the original one. It allows new points of view and different relationships between the inner and outer spaces of the object.

The moment an object is declared whole or complete is chosen randomly. Nothing is perfect: everything is in a constant state of creation and deconstruction. That means that no single moment is more or less beautiful and meaningful than any other, which makes both the original object and the crumpled one equally "correct" at the present moment they are looked at.

*from the accompanying text Suspended In Pink, 2013    

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Zoe Robertson 

Pixelmania 2012: Sublimated inks, plastic, silicone, flock fibre, fishing floats and hooks. Hand fabricated and outsourced component parts, vacuum formed, flocked, sublimated. 85 x 40 x 14 cm

An open-minded approach to challenging the boundaries of jewellery coupled with an intuitive relationship with materials is the driving force and motivation behind her practice based research. 

Design ideas arise by experimenting with a breadth of unconventional materials; often industrial in nature she redirects these manufacturing processes to offer a new direction to the discipline. These processes continually serve to initiate a visual language which is capitalised upon to create her work.

*from the accompanying text Suspended In Pink, 2013

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Suspended In Pink show comes to the Heidi Lowe Gallery! Curated by Laura Bradshaw-Heap.

To be suspended.

...

Why pink?, why not blue or green or black, peach, indigo, or tangerine? There are numerous reasons, opening up a riot of explorations into pink's many connotations, cultural references and gender associations. And yet, at the same time it is arbitrary. It is just a colour. Nothing more or less. It is a beggining.

*from the accompanying text Suspended In Pink, 2013