Sarah hood

The Power of Landscape

58 ORNAMENT 34.4.2011

Robin Updike

She has degrees in metals and poetryand her interest in Eastern philosophy, she says, gives her, an equanimity, a way of seeing things that doesnt elevate one thing above another, but rates everything equally.

ver since the first Paleolithic artist plucked charcoal out of the fire and drew representations of the world, people have created landscapes. Landscapes can be beautiful or awe inspiring, which is one reason we love them. But they are also endlessly compelling because they tell us something about ourselves. Whether we are gazing at a sweeping nineteenth-century panorama of the American West or an impressionistic eleventh-century Chinese mountainscape, we envision ourselves in those natural environments. How we feel once we find ourselves in those landscapes, virtually speaking, can be revelatory. Seattle jewelrymaker Sarah Hood is well aware of the power of landscape to shape those who live in it. For more than a decade she has been making art that evokes landscape and the natural world. Im trying to create new landscapes that deal with the human condition, states Hood. I want to consider where we fit in that landscape. Here in the Northwest, where we are surrounded by mountains and water, we all feel the presence of the landscape acutely. Yet, says Hood, even in a place such as Seattle, where astonishing vistas are visible from nearly every window and park bench, it is easy to be lulled into thinking of the natural world as a pretty picture for our enjoyment rather than as a living, breathing, physical, and sometimes perilous part of our universe. We are constantly looking at mountains. We see them everyday. Yet if you have done any mountain climbing or bouldering, you know mountains can be monsters and terrifying. They are not always cuddly and cute. So by shifting the scale of things in my landscapes, I hope to change the perspective a little and make people think.

SARAH HOOD in her studio, 2011. Photograph by Steven Miller. SILVER TREE NECKLACE WITH PREHNITE of sterling silver, prehnite; fabricated, cast pendant, 7.6 centimeters high, 45.7 centimeters long chain, 2007.

59 ORNAMENT 34.4.2011

Opposite page: ARBORETUM from Structural Series #1: Decomposition of sterling silver, magnolia leaves, linen thread; fabricated, 40.6 centimeters long, 1999. Private Collection. Photographs by Doug Yaple, except where noted.

Being a jewelry artist and creating landscapes may seem like mutually exclusive pursuits. For starters, landscapes are big. Jewelry is small. Yet in her work Hood has combined her fascination with nature and our place in it with her life-long passion for making miniatures. Her art is also influenced by her study of literature and literary theory. She has degrees in metals and poetryand her interest in Eastern philosophy, she says, gives her, an equanimity, a way of seeing things that doesnt elevate one thing above another, but rates everything equally. In Hoods jewelry sequoias are not necessarily more important than flower blossoms. Precious metals and gems do not trump plastic design elements. Many of Hoods most distinctive techniques and design ideas are in play in her ongoing series Landscape. The series includes such pieces as Summer Tree ring, Tree Collar, Root, and Pine/Lily bracelet, all of which explore the meaning of relative scale and the intellectual implications of mixing precious and nonprecious materials. Most pieces in this suite were made with sterling silver and little puffs of the green or

brown plastic shrubbery used by model train devotees to add verisimilitude to their Lilliputian railroads. In Summer Tree ring, the actual ring shank is sterling silver painstakingly cast to look like a twig bent into a fingersized loop. The three-inch tree growing out of the ring is made of plastic HO gauge model railroad parts. It has the look of a tiny bonsai with perfectly pruned tufts of foliage. It is a deciduous tree, by the looks of it, and since it is green, it must be summer. Tree Collar is a glade of plastic brown model train trees suspended upside down to hang on a wire as a necklace. It is as if a line of trees on a wintry horizon had been flipped upside down. Both Summer Tree ring and Tree Collar mix traditional ideas about natures grandeur and grace with unconventional ideas about how to interact with nature. Perhaps you do it by wearing a tiny bit of it on your finger, or by wearing a miniature forest around your neck. Pine/Lily bracelet is a juxtaposition of the macro landscape of large evergreen trees with a micro landscape you would only notice if you were a gardener looking toward the earth

Clockwise starting from left: ENAMEL RINGS from Color Series: Dissemblance of fine silver, enamel, glass; fabricated, enameled, each approximately 3.8 centimeters high, 1999. Private Collections. PADME RING of sterling silver, eighteen karat/sterling bimetal; fabricated, approximately 2.5 centimeters wide, 1999. Private Collection. RING THREE FROM THREE RINGS, from Structural Series #2: Deconstruction of eighteen karat gold, sterling silver; fabricated, approximately 2.5 centimeters wide, 1999.

60 ORNAMENT 34.4.2011

SUMMER TREE RING of sterling silver, plastic model railroad tree armature, model railroad landscape materials: underbrush, bush, talus; fabricated, cast, ring approximately 5.1 centimeters wide, 2007. Collection of Tacoma Art Museum. Top: ROOT of sterling silver, model railroad tree; cast, fabricated, approximately 22.9 centimeters wide, 2008. Collection of Tacoma Art Museum. Above: LANDSCAPE SAMPLE RINGS of sterling silver, model railroad landscape materials: bush, field grass, talus, handmade shadow box of cherry wood, felt, fabric; fabricated, rings approximately 3.8 centimeters diameter, display box 20.3 centimeters high, 2007. Private Collection.

while tending to a garden. The lily pods, in fact, are life-sized. Hoods sterling elementsseedpods, twigs, bud stemsare all cast from real natural forms. Like a camera aperture trying to adjust to include both distance and close up images in a scene, Pine/Lily bracelet asks us to consider the distant landscape of the regal firs and the close-up landscape of the lily pods. Both views of the natural world are real. And, as humans, we fit somewhere in the middle. In Hoods necklace Root, another of her little plastic trees perches on a cast silver branch. Beneath the branch, which can be viewed as both the ground and a horizon, a root twice as long as the tree is tall extends powerfully down. The root seems so firmly part of the earth that you get the sense it could withstand whatever nature or mankind tosses at it. If a windstorm knocked down the tree, the root would remain and regenerate another tree. Then there is the pair of crocosmia buds sprouting up next to the tree. Like a surreal scene from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There the flower buds are as large as the tree. The necklace shows a world

where the relative scale of things we think we know is topsy turvy. And it reminds us that what is unseen may be more substantial than what we see on the surface. For a piece of jewelry that is essentially spare, it poses several provocative questions. I want to create landscapes that are not necessarily focused on reality, Hood says. Theres a blurring of the lines between real landscape and this fantasy landscape. I want to encourage a shift in scale and a change in perception. Related to the Landscape pieces are Hoods Arbor, Organic and Botanica series. As their names suggest, these suites are based on plants and the natural world. In the Organic series, Hood uses organic materials, including dried leaves and dried seed pods. Though Hoods design aesthetic is a mix of sleek modern metal and natural, or faux natural, elements, the pieces in Organic are also romantic, as though made for Queen Titania and her posse of woodland fairies. Transcript is a choker necklace in which papery Chinese lantern pods in various stages of decay become beads. Some of the pods are vibrant orange and appear to be in full bloom. Others are desiccated, brown and fragile

61 ORNAMENT 34.4.2011

looking. In two other extraordinary necklaces from the Organic series, dried Eucalyptus leaves and live oak pods become the main design elements. The necklaces are talismanic homages to the beauty of the natural world and its never-ending cycle of growth, bloom and decay. They also have an earthy glamour that is irresistible. A charming aspect of the Organic pieces is that many of them are named after the place where Hood collected the organic material used to make them. Hence the Eucalyptus necklace is called Big Sur. The Savannah necklace is made of beautifully burnished live oak pods Hood found in Savannah, Georgia. Main Street #1 is a choker of what appear to be chocolate brown roses with a bronzed patina. The roses are actually some kind of seed or pod that Hood has never been able to identify. Hood loves traveling, and travels often around the country to visit friends and family. Its rare that I come home from a trip without a bag or box of some kind of organic material, she says. Many of the dogwood twigs in my pieces were gathered in Colorado, where some of my family lives. Hood says that some pieces in the Organic series, including the pieces with the Chinese lantern pods, are not necessarily meant to be worn, or at least not more than once. They come with their own display boxes, and Hood envisions that they may be displayed rather than worn. She adds that when I made some of these pieces, I had in mind the organic flower wedding jewelry of India and other parts of Asiapieces of jewelry meant to be worn once.

In spite of her interest in plastic and organic materials, Hood has started using gemstones such as diamonds, sapphires and citrine in some of her newest work, which include rings in the Botanica series. I try to work with natural, unheated, untreated gemstones in these pieces, she points out. I never thought of myself as a diamond person. But, surprisingly, over the last couple of years I have found myself drawn more and more to them. Hood also works in enamel, and has in the past made enamel flowers that look like hot house princesses. Created in vibrant reds and violets, the enamel blooms suggest perfumed tropical breezes in places where orchids and gardenias grow like weeds. A native of Seattle, Hoods parents moved frequently when she was young. She and her family lived in Detroit, Hawaii, Colorado, and Ohio. Her parents divorced when she was a teenager and afterwards she spent time with her father in New York and her mother in Seattle. Travel became a part of her life and opened her eyes to regional differences in the natural world. I think maybe thats one reason Im so interested in the locale where Im living. Moving around is comfortable for me. But also what is comfortable to me is to make contact with the ground, to see what is there. I like to examine a place and find out what makes it that place in particular. Hood briefly attended college in Boston, then moved to Santa Cruz, California, where she took her first jewelry class at Cabrillo Community College. I was in love with a guy who signed up for a jewelry class, so I did too. But I immediately loved it. I loved that this whole, tiny world could literally exist

MAIN STREET #1 of sterling silver, deciduous material; fabricated, 22.9 centimeters wide, 2001. SAVANNAH BRACELET of live oak pods, elastic; 5.1 centimeters diameter, edition of three. SAVANNAH NECKLACE of sterling silver, live oak pods, silk cord; cast, strung, approximately 45.7 centimeters long, 2000.

62 ORNAMENT 34.4.2011

BIG SUR of sterling silver, eucalyptus leaves, wool yarn; fabricated, 35.6 centimeters long, 2000. Collection of Tacoma Art Museum. TRANSCRIPT of sterling silver, Chinese lantern pods; fabricated, 20.3 centimeters diameter, 2001.

on a finger. I was stunned with how much you could do on that scale. It really was about making tiny sculpture. At Cabrillo she took classes from jewelry artist Linda Watson, who was on the faculty, and guest instructor Nancy M gan e Corwin. And she found that jewelrymaking reminded her of one of her childhood passions, creating furniture for a handmade dollhouse her parents had bought for her. I spent years making furniture for that dollhouse, redecorating it. I loved working in miniature, even as a child. So at Cabrillo I realized that jewelry really was about tiny sculpture. I probably could have been just as happy in a sculpture class. But that said, I like the challenge of making tiny sculpture wearable. After Cabrillo, Hood moved to New York, where she enrolled at the New School and earned a bachelor of arts in poetry writing. At the same time, she was studying metal design at Parsons School of Design. An avid reader, she has always felt a connection between the kind of writing she most admires and jewelrymaking. The language I love most is that which allows itself to be distilled and refined and squeezed and still retains a meaning. She loves poetry, for its ability to convey a profound concept in a few short lines. And of course, both poetry and jewelry, by their very nature, have to be concise and have a certain scale. By the late 1990s Hood realized she wanted to live and work in Seattle. She moved back to Seattle

Provided courtesy of www.ornamentmagazine.com

63 ORNAMENT 34.4.2011

and was accepted into the University of Washington Metal Design program, where she earned her bachelor of fine arts in 1999. Within months of graduating her work was being shown at galleries in Seattle and Cambridge. Not surprisingly for a jewelrymaker whose works invoke the natural world, Hoods neatly organized studio resembles a parts factory for Mother Nature. There are drawers of tiny cast silver twigs, seedpods and asparagus spears, and containers filled with real horse chestnuts and dried flower parts. Then there are the assortments of plastic shrubbery and trees, which make me laugh, she says. I love playing with these little parts. It is literally everything I wanted to do when I was a little kid. I just wanted to make things for that dollhouse for the rest of my life. Now I spend days sitting here with tiny plastic trees, my reading glasses and super glue. Its so great. Laughing as she works, and laughing in general, is an important part of her life. And her subtle, openhearted sense of humor also helps explain her jewelry. In a statement she recently wrote about the role of humor in craft, Hood noted that if she laughs when she lays one of her pieces out on her work table, I know Ive got it right. When I work, I ask myself questions like: What will make someone say Oh! I didnt expect that! Thats what Im going forthat unexpectedness and delight.