Hello!

I'm hoping to maintain this leaflet as a creative log, to track the continuous projects I make and also to organize the ideas of longer-term ideas.

I have struggled to maintain consistency with any sort of organizational system to uphold creativity, especially post-grad in the lacking of formal structure. It has gotten better with the regular meetings of PULP Collective and also having incredibly dedicated artists as friends.

This is a necklace I started a while ago, the design of the pendant is based on this harness trapping from the Walters museum collection. There will eventually be two stones set into it, a triangular light blue stone and an oval faceted green stone (not sure if it is actually a stone?). I am quite nervous to set the triangular stone- but I still have to solder the chain to the pendant and then tumble it before I can set them, which means a 3-week wait for me till I can get in the studio. I made this chain for it sort of on a whim, definitely not very well planned, but I think I like it. And also, I think if I change my mind I can just cut it off and wear the pendant on its own.

The description says the animals are two felines and a sheep, but I've chosen to make them all their own sorts of rams, with their distinctly shaped horns. I also added the green oval stone to act as the central devil figure, but maybe an earth for the rams to stand on. I've been gravitating towards the ram as a symbol lately, it has found itself around me quite often and I wonder about the meaning of them in ancient pieces.

A description for a different piece on the Walters website, one that explicitly is a ram, says that the ram was a fertility symbol. A Getty article describes many contexts for adornments featuring rams, but does add that they carry "legendary strength and virility (and hence its creative powers), and its characteristics as a leader and protector of his flock." But also, maybe it was just a fashion trend.

I used to reference ancient Iranian artifacts and craft a lot in my art practice, and for a while I tried staying away. I think I was hesitant about many things- being reduced to a social identity, feeling unoriginal in my design, not making something that means enough. I'm trying to get all this criticality out right now so I don't harp on it for the rest of my entry, lol. And because I need to get over it!

I feel inspired by the things that so long ago meant so much to a group of people that I will always be connected to. I love to observe and witness and resorb the physical remnants of a society, the objects that accompanied a person or a place and that I know were made with somebody's hands. I feel inspired to make new things with my hands that speak to those old things. I appreciate nothing more than regularity and ritual being associated with object, and for object to be handmade and for me to know deeply the time and material and thought and love that was put into object, and ON TOP OF ALL THAT for object to have a direct and meaningful connection to a thing that was made thousands of years ago by/for a person who I will never know but to whom maybe this object was very special. For their special thing to never be forgotten is my forever wish.

Maybe this is why the word connection was always the root of every statement I tried to write about my work.

One thing i also will add is that I know that leaflet is connected to bluesky but I think I made a bluesky account to make this leaflet. I wonder if my posts will be posted to bluesky as well?

This was fun. Talk soon!

MINA