A joint presentation between these two artists was a highlight of SOFA NY in 2006.David says he builds clear, often figurative pictures, recognizable at first sight. These pieces, often produced in small series, make conversation points, make it easy for people to talk to each other, to step over barriers.

He’s attracted to the plain, ugly or singularly possessed things that we find around us and gives to them the possibility to become loved, liked or at least taken seriously, to be transformed, to begin again with a new independent character.

He hardly ever refines the materials he uses. Rather, he lets the associative possibility that lie within the materials serve the observer. This should look easy, like a magic trick. He tries to intervene with the materials as little as possible.

Themes of interest include the closeness of the wearer to the works, the constant change of context through movement and wearing in public space; the choice of clothing and placement on the body and the often spontaneous planned interaction between the viewer and the wearer of the work.

Helen notes that we are drowning in objects and materials that masquerade as other things. It is hard not to gasp in wonder at the barrage of possible choices, particularly in Europe. So she gathers things and combines them haphazardly into a world of her own material invention.

“My practice as a jeweler, if it mimics anything, it is the way we see the natural world, and the meaning of our efforts to perceive it, rather than its appearance. What I am interested in showing is that the natural and the man-made are inextricably mixed in contemporary experience.”

Some recent works are preoccupied with an interest in plvspace=”5″ hspace=”5″ acing figurative elements in constructed environments, particularly in the brooches where she is building little landscapes or world. These combinations of figures, elements and materials aim to evoke an atmosphere, rather than a narrative.