In a couple of earlier posts I featured some jewelery made by my daughter, Jo and the land art she created as stimuli for her creations.

This month saw her finish her work towards a “City and Guilds” award, which she has been studying for at Westhope College in South Shropshire. The culmination of the course was an exhibition at the college when each faculty at the college displayed the work of their students. The displays were put together by the students themselves.

Here are two of the land art creations.

The other major influence on her work was finding a skeletal poppy-seed heads and a skeletal bract of an eryngium in the garden. She studied structures in nature such as the mathematics of spirals and the Fibonacci sequence. The photo below is of one of her final pieces based on progression of spirals. Most of her current pieces are of silver some with touches of copper.

Setting up the exhibition was great fun. We loaded my car to the gunwales with all the course work and materials needed to put the work up in as effective a way as possible. To get to the college we drove through narrow lanes which ran with rainwater flooding off the fields and creating rivulets for us to drive through. When we arrived at the college it took several shunts to get the car through the narrow gates off the narrow lane, but once through we reversed up to the doorway to unload.

Once inside we saw we had our work cut out. The display boards were hard and staple guns banned and there was a window right in the middle of the area! Nevertheless we set to work covering the boards with fabrics to prepare suitable backgrounds for the displays.

Jude and Jo get to work.

Fabrics in place.

Cleaning pebbles to create a spiral for the display afforded a chance for some fresh air.

With the preparation complete we got on with the task of showing Jo’s work, the development sheets, ideas books, designs and final pieces.

As the photo below shows it was all worthwhile as Jo was awarded a Distinction for her work and received a cup a “Best Student of the Year”. To see more of Jo’s work go to her website which is in the process of being set up so is still unfinished. www.tigdesigns.co.uk