Maker Crush Monday

This week's artist for Maker Crush Monday is Iris Bodemer. I'm drawn to Bodemer's forms and materials. I love how she combines precious or semi-precious stones and materials with string and and found objects. Her use of stones, again speaks to my geologic nature. String is also another favorite material of mine. There's a simplicity and trueness to her forms that I'm also attracted to. I've never seen a work of her's in person, and I'd love to see them on the body.

Bodemer doesn't have any sort of artist statement on her website, and I'd also love to hear about her process and where she draws inspiration for her work. I've been thinking lately about the work I'm most drawn to, and the work I would most like to make. It seems to me that in jewelry you can make production/functional work to be worn or used, narrative work that tells your story, work where you focus on technique or history or even some social cause. All of it has a place and serves a function, but I get most excited about work the reads to me visually like poetry. There's a broadness to it's meaning, and openess in in interpretation, and I feel like poetry, your viewer will never be able to exactly grasp the maker's message. But that's sort of the point. You have permission to project your internal experience and take away from it whatever it is that you need from that piece, like a poem.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm way off, and there is specific meaning in Bodemer's work. Or maybe I'm way off the other way, and it's just a formal investigation. But still, it helps me focus in on the work I want to make: pure poetry, with no wrong answers.

You can see more of Iris Bodemer's phenomenal work here.

Thanks for reading.