Natural World
S/S 2025
An exhibition of work from our members reflecting on the theme of ‘Natural World’.
Jennifer Wells
“ I am Here Collection”
Begun in 2021, The “I am here” Collection is greatly inspired by landscapes, both external and internal. The works focus on place and how we exist and interact with our environment. Raw materials from the area where I live are gathered and incorporated into the works to create the focal point, an enameled plate. In the process of enameling, layers are applied, removed and manipulated. The process of creating the enamels I view as parallel to the process of becoming of ourselves. We must go through layers of life, building up and at times selectively removing aspects, as we become who we are.
Each piece in this Collection is meant as a quiet reflective moment as we become ourselves in the place we are.
Silke Espinet
My main area of work during the past year has been enamelling. I have been exploring various enamelling techniques, as well as experimenting with enamelling larger pieces, apart from making jewellery. I am passionate about the environment, the protection and preservation of wild animals and insects. For this online exhibition I would like to put forward two enamelled plaques, one of which features a tortoise in the Caribbean Sea as it would have swum for millennia. The second plaque shows a tortoise swimming into a large net. That piece is mounted on a mirror, so the onlooker can see themselves in it.
I am also a jewellery artist who is fascinated with colours, crystals and stones. Some of my pieces are electro formed with organic materials and precious stones. The second piece of the turtle swimming into a net is electro formed.
Jem O’Carroll
Enamel couples ancient history and my childhood with the here and now. There is an agelessness to the colour and materials of copper and glass fused in the heated furnace of the kiln and time.
My art represents a maturing emotional relationship with the subjects of my external and internal environments with which I'm continually encountering, in part, I am growing by rediscovering my child, learning by mistakes and play.
Jeanne Crosse
Enamel copper bowls with enamel painting inspired by nature, garden and my imagination.
Linda Connelly
Linda Connelly is an award-winning enamel artist who is inspired by stories and memories. She began enamelling over thirty years ago when her then new husband bought home an old enamelling kiln for her to try form a junk shop. She had always experimented with a range of different media and art forms and there was something about the combination of glass and colour that seduced her and enamelling has now become a major part of her life. She loves to create unique and colourful pieces of enamel art with a narrative, bringing memories to life in jewellery, bowls and small panels.
Jewellery has often been used to convey messages and these pieces aim to raise awareness about environmental issues. Themes include Kelp Forests and Coral Reefs. The seahorse pieces depict a creature that is under threat and the coral reefs jewellery contrasts the darkness of the reef signifying where it is dying with the vibrant centres where they are alive and flourishing. Both habitats are under threat from over-fishing, pollution and climate change. I use the traditional techniques of gold and silver cloisonné enamel on hand-engraved silver to make beautifully finished and unique pieces that are the heirlooms of the future.
Navah Langmeyer
Navah’s creations are a vibrant mix of contemporary design and traditional enamelling, inspired by her mathematical background, love of water, British landscapes, and the materials with which she works. Working from her home studio, Navah experiments with colour, texture, and modularity, creating visually striking, interactive pieces. Her jewellery often incorporates movement, encouraging engagement. Navah’s work is full of energy and life, much like the waters that inspire her.
These pieces were designed around the found natural materials included in the work.
Elizabeth White-Pultz
These pieces were all inspired by my experience working at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Working at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library I've been exposed to the natural world through both the landscape of the Garden and the myriad works of botanical art and related material housed in the library. I took an image from a letter to the 19th century botanist John Torrey as inspiration for my brooch using graphite.The Bronx River flows through the Garden and inspired my Bronx River Totem brooch. A winter day in the Native Plants Garden gave me the idea for First Snow.
Yun Kyung Kim
The Mother Goddess of the Earth sleeps under the frozen ground, and her ice cold hair blows with becoming the winter wind, along with the snow.
There are fruit-bearing branches and blossoming flowers above her, where touch with her wind. The four season is always coexist in the natural world.
But it is not easy to know them all.