I love Aloes & Succulents

 Indigenous plants are an important factor to the sustainability of a habitat. Native plants attract birds bugs and wildlife and often feed off them either direct or indirectly. Continued human propagation of indigenous trees and plants will help to insure sustainable eco systems. I've decided to do an Aloe and Succulents range, starting with Aloes. There are about 120 different species of aloe in South Africa. Most are indigenous to the Cape, including my favorite- Aloe Africana. Took some photos of a few of the aloes in our garden.....

My favorite. a special friend gave it to me.

my favorite again.... Aloe Africana

Also mad about Rock Roses

Looking at how I'm going to construct recognizable ones. 

Beautifully adorned

I've collected an assortment of  "cow art", different beautiful cows.

Holy cow -Madurai Temple

A decorated cow

Barbara Philips- Watercolour.

Cant find the artists name for this work, but its striking.

A happy blue cow- Marcia Baldwin

This painting above is by Rebecca Colins, she specializes in custom pet portraits, painting colourfully over digital images. I really dig her fun and funky style. Check out her blog - Art Dog Blog http://artdogblog.blogspot.com

Cartoon style wood cow studs - Craftjuice

Whats cool?

 Colourful decorative painted furniture by Lucas Rise.....Verrrrrry coool :)

Makes me think of festivals and Indian hand-painted cows. For me it all invokes the essence of the word, "special". One of a kind; i just love this. And I want to translate it into my next piece, maybe a cow brooch. Lucas Rise, one day i will buy a piece of your beautiful furniture. 

What does sustainable mean......... & In terms of jewellery.

I have found a few simple definitions of Sustainable that i find most relevant.

• Sustainability the quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources and thereby supporting long term ecological balance.
• Sustainable a system that maintains its own viability by using techniques that allow for continued re-use. - able to be maintained or kept going, as an action or process.

The UN took a look into global environment problems in 1983 and came up with this effective definition - That which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In relation to jewellery i would put 'needs', because there is no real need for jewellery. In Bruce Metcalfs' paper On The Nature of Jewellery he talks about the five functions of jewellery:

1. Attachment to the body
2. Personal decoration
3. Social identity/status
4. Portable wealth
5. Spiritual

 I see my jewellery predominately fitting under Personal decoration- visually stimulating in terms of colour, contrast and texture. As well as social identity/status- social perceptions- The type or style of jewellery a wearer chooses often speaks for them within a social grouping or stereo type. i think Narrative jewellery would also fall under this 'function', some of my work is narrative. From this I suppose i need to create my own jewellery specific definition of sustainability.......   ah in time, it will come :)

Eg This simple pierced pendant of mine not only serves as decoration but would also say something about the wearer who chooses it, most likely a nature lover. 

Julia Manheim "Sustainable Jewellery"

Now that Ive established the two main factors i need to tackle to make my jewellery more "sustainable", I need to find other jewellers who are doing similar things and see how they go about it. I am finding it quiet difficult to find jewellers working with this concept. Luckily there is Julia Manheims book "Sustainable Jewellery". I am going to start with Manheims book, And look at her different concepts of sustainable jewellery, what it means to other artists and how they go about it. Looking at it from a broader perspective first and then by process of elimination rule out and then bring in what i mean by sustainable jewellery. From there i'll work out how im going to execute my practices.

Another trip to Botanical Gardens

This time, instead of taking a million pictures of a million different plants that i don't know and usually don't end up using. I went for a more structured approach and went strait to the indigenous trees section and gathered and photographed the leaves of the trees i would most like to use as a reference to my Jewellery. I also picked up a variety of dry leaves off the floor, i find these so beautiful the way they decompose, slowly -starting by curling inwards to eventually withering away where there is only a vein skeleton left, reminds me somewhat of rust.

Indigenous Plant Market at botanical gardens

A very useful and interesting outing. Unfortunately i only got there on sunday afternoon and lots of the plants were sold out, and almost ALL the aloes, which is what i intended to buy most of. I still managed to get photos of a wide variety of saplings. Amongst them i have a few favorites. One of them being the Large-Leaved Rock fig which has significance to me as i have memories of it from when i lived in Mozambique. Been thinking about that one for a while but wasnt sure what it was, finally i found the name of it :). Am going to use this one as a reference for my next piece.