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Not only a spectacular show, with it Helen Feiler also makes history as
this is the first time the Tate, whether in London, Liverpool or St
Ives, has mounted an exhibition of jewellery. She says: "I'm thrilled,
of course, but I have to say how grateful I am to Susan Daniel-McElroy
who, as Director of Tate St Ives, had faith in me and first invited me
to show my jewellery there."As well as exhibiting her necklaces in the
gallery, she has also produced a series of six different designs, each
comprising a necklace, bracelet and earrings, that will be on sale in
the gallery's shop.
Destined,
in a manner of speaking, to be an artist from the word go, she is the
daughter of two of Penwith's well-known painters Paul Feiler and June
Miles, and sister of acclaimed potter Christine Feiler. "As a child she
was fascinated by the collection of Japanese prints, Indian miniatures
and ancient artefacts in the family home, and from these early
influences later learned how to interpret the world visually in a
restrained and effortless style of her own". She studied at Falmouth
School of Art, at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design where she
gained a BA degree in painting, and at Goldsmith's College in London
and, for good measure, also spent a year on a printmaking fellowship at
Bath Academy of Art, Corsham.
Subsequent to an extended visit to
the USA, making drawings while travelling through the country, among
other things, in the 1970s she had a studio in St Ives, was in charge
of screenprinting at the Penwith Galleries, taught screenprinting at O
and A levels for a time. During the 1980s Helen produced a large
collection of wallpapers, designed by herself and other artists. In the
1990s she took jewellery lessons with Alex Everitt, developed a lost
wax technique and method of jewellery making, "one of the earliest
metal technologies evolved, with skills from other disciplines, to
complement and animate surface, form and colour in relation to the
body", worked part-time for St.Just-based sculptor Paul Mount on waxes
for sculpture, and then, some nine years ago, opened her own Helen
Feiler Gallery in Newlyn.
During these three busy decades she
also somehow found the time and energy to exhibit extensively, enjoying
solo and mixed shows of her paintings from Newlyn Orion, Penzance, to
the Penwith Galleries, the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, to
the Gallery Ruf, Munich, Germany, and of her jewellery from the New
Millennium Gallery, St Ives, to Tresco Gallery on the Isles of Scilly,
the Cornwall Crafts Association to Jaded, New York, in the USA.
Only
a few months ago, in the summer of 2006, she held an exhibition of her
jewellery and her works on paper at the Redfern Gallery in Cork Street,
London. A gallery renowned for its promotion of artists from Penwith -
her father Paul has shown there more than once. The works it selected
amounted to a retrospective embracing as they did everything from line
drawings of reclining figures she made in the early 1960s, drawings
that were praised at the time, as she recalls, by her godfather the
late William Scott who taught at Bath Academy of Art, spent several
summers in this part of the world in the post-war years and was part of
the 1985 St Ives at the Tate exhibition, and silk screenprints she had
made in her studio at the Penwith Galleries in the 1970s, to her more
recent works on paper, plus, of course, her jewellery.
An artist
who describes her work as "a celebration of natural beauty, of stone,
colour and the ephemeral quality of light", for the past few years she
has been in the happy position of being able to spend time on the
island of Lamu off the coast of Kenya where her daughter Rachael, who
is coming to this country especially for her mother's exhibition, runs
Diamond Beach Village and where she now has a studio. While it is
likely that her sculptural gilded silver and bronze jewellery pieces
owe something to such an exotic location, the story of their creation
begins with the central stone, crystal or fossil she uses. It is a
close study of this which provides her with the inspiration for what
follows, the "celebration of its natural qualities and complex design".
As
award winning author Hilary Spurling, acclaimed for her biography of
Henri Matisse, says so eloquently in her introduction to the artist's
jewellery: "She works with silver, bronze and lumps of rock: turquoise
and malachite, clear rock crystal secreting ferny tufts of grey or
coral-pink moss agate, an irregular pink freshwater pearl; strangely
shaped like a mermaid or dancer, its fluidity and pallor accentuated by
milky glints of shell and silver ... These spiny, forceful and
expressive jewels often look more like trophies, weapons, spiked and
studded armour. Polished globes of crystal cased in silver or bronze,
seen from the back, become respectively a gleaming blade and a tiny
gilded knobkerrie. A jagged boss of translucent rock crystal, the size
of a small clenched fist, emerges with explosive energy from linked
medallions of flat silver spills arranged like the petals of a daisy
chain...Her necklaces link past and present. Boadicea might have worn
them.
"At the same time, they are flexible, practical, easy to
handle and unexpectedly comfortable to wear. They glow, gleam or grow
dim according to the time of day, changing colour, catching and
reflecting light, responding to the warmth and movement of a human
body. Even the most sumptuous are fluid enough to shift and slither
against the curves of neck and breast. Light is their element but, for
all their brilliance, both stone and metal still have about them
something of the earthy darkness from which they came."
Scintillating
and superb, necklaces, bracelets and earrings that most ladies,
whatever their shape or size, whether matching Mrs Merdle's
magnificence or not, would die for, Helen Feiler's jewellery can be
seen in Tate St Ives, 10am-4.20pm (last admission 4pm) Tuesday-Sunday,
from this Saturday, until May 13.
article THE CORNISHMAN
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