End Point Statement Georgia Graham

To cleave is both to split and to cling. With pink pearls as my material, my ideas for the making of this project have grown out of a process of thinking about the ways in which text and material intersect.

Pink pearls, pink gums, cleft palate

Pearls as teeth

Pearls washed in milk, teeth kept in milk, bones drinking milk, hooves making milk

Pearls as hooves

Pearls as bones

Cleaved bone, meat cleaver, cleaved limbs,

Rabbits foot clung to for luck, cows hooves make adhering glue

Earth split open, torn asunder by cloven hoof.

Final Pieces Georgia Graham

Materials: freshwater dyed pearls, silver, denture wax

Georgia SCA Mid Point Statement

I began working on the project by experimenting with the pearls that I was given as my material. As my text involved the idea of splitting, I have been concentrating on ways of cutting the pearls up into pieces. I have tried drilling, sawing and filing, smashing with a hammer and by dropping on the ground, chipping with hammer and shaving and shaping with a drill. I was originally envisaging making a piece or pieces from pearls alone, however the results of my experiments were not as interesting as I had hoped. So I am now looking at using the pearls in conjunction with silver. I have most recently been experimenting with carving wax forms to be cast in silver, which I can then set the pearl into.

Georgia Graham Beginning Statement

My text is the word Cleave.

This is such an interesting word, when I looked up what it means, I found it has two meanings, which seem to be almost opposing:

To split or cause to split, especially along a natural weakness, to make by or as if by cutting to cleave a path, to penetrate or traverse, to separate or cut with a tool, such as a sharp instrument; “cleave the bone”. To make by cutting into; “The water is going to cleave a channel into the rock” -split, open, divide, crack, slice, rend, sever, part, hew, tear asunder, sunder. ‘The axe had cleaved open the back of his skull’, cleavage – the split between a woman’s breasts, cleaver – a butcher’s knife, cloven hoof, cleft hoof – a hoof like those of cows, sheep etc, which has a split up the centre.

And

To stick to, stand by, cling to, hold to, be devoted to, adhere to, be attached to, abide by, be true to, ‘She teaches the principles she has cleaved to for more than 40 years’.

My material is a string of pink dyed freshwater pearls. I think this material will be very challenging for me, but I am excited about the possibilities – I am thinking about trying to split them and then stick them back together or to one another or something along these lines.

Georgia (SCA) material from Jess

Fresh water pink dyed pearls

Georgia Graham (SCA) text from Sarah Read (Whitireia)

cleave