Foreclosed Familiar

 For many, home and family are intertwined notions, as a family member can embody a sense of belonging and comfort in any given space. However, after the tragic or unexpected loss of a family member, home can come to represent a difficult time at the end of a loved one’s life. These works explore the deterioration of comfort in a place that was once home, by exposing materials like rotting wood or crumbling drywall from underneath familiar, floral patterns and domestic spaces. To this purpose, historical metalsmithing processes, including enameling and champlevé, were integrated with industrial materials to create a visual dichotomy between idyllic references of home and deterioration.

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        This body of work, titled Foreclosed Familiar, was inspired by the Victorian mourning custom of expressing grief through the display of specific clothing and, more importantly, jewelry. Elaborate floral arrangements and motifs were fashionable at the time and make several appearances throughout this series; alluding to funerary sprays and arrangements. Due to their prominence within mourning customs, brooches encompass much of this series, recontextualized for grieving the loss of home. A brooch is an intimate piece of jewelry that has a “front” which is publicly presented and a “back” with which only the wearer sees. The display of any type of mourning, outside funeral attire, has almost entirely disappeared from Western culture. To bear one of these pieces is to outwardly present personal dysfunction or grief, a part of us we usually feel compelled to keep to ourselves. For that purpose, this series seeks to express the complexities of grief through the anxiety, discomfort and emotional upheaval that often comes with unexpected loss or dislocation.