Title: The Geometry of Mess
I made these earrings the way one makes sense of life slowly, with resistance, with doubt, and with moments of sudden clarity that arrive unanounced. Copper is a difficult companion. It remembers every touch, every wrong turn, every attempt to straighten what was never meant to be straight. To work with it is to accept that correction is also creation.
The opalite rests inside the copper like a quiet question. It does not shine; it listens. Its light is borrowed, not owned. It is diffused pale echo that shifts when the wearer moves, when breath changes, when the body decides to turn away or lean in. Nothing here is fixed. Nothing here is pure. Everything is contingent, as we are.
We are not born empty. We are not tabula rasa.
We are born weighted filled with unfinished griefs, fears, and longings of those who came before us, with memories we do not remember but still obey. Life is not simple, and it is not elegant. That simplicity is a lie we are taught so we will not panic when the world refuses to align. Real life is tangle: of impulse and restraint, of tenderness and error, of acts we regret and acts we never had the courage to make.
These earrings hold that truth in their structure. Each loop is a small negotiation. Each crossing is a moment where disorder was not erased but framed, lifted, given the boundary so it could be endured. This is what we do with ourselves, too. we gather mess, we wrap it carefully, and we present it to the world as form.
When worn, they move as body moves. They warm to the skin. They sway with hesitation and with resolve. They do not pretend to be perfect; they pretend to be held.
And perhaps that is all elegance ever was — not the absence of chaos, but courage to carry it beautifully.
Hand-woven copper and opalite, made slowly in Ballarat, for those who know that the light only matters because it is fragile.