Playing with Retro

As this blog will be jumping between time periods, it will also be jumping between piece styles. Today's piece arose from a desire to make a vintage-esque pendant for a new store that recently began carrying my work. Located in the semi-retro area of Toronto, The Trap Door Boutique exclusively carries only 20 designers. The owner, Gabrielle, has collected a unique blend of wearable art that ranges from classic dark elegance to retro-loving fun to the rave days of yesteryear. My wire crochet line is also included in this elite team, including collars, earrings, and pendants that have never shown anywhere.

In any case, on with the story!

This little dude is loving called, "a mesh with a hairdue." He started with an idea: to make a fashionable vintage styled piece using the my love of wire crochet. To this point, my art has solely focused around the themes, colors, and shapes found in our green environment. I wanted to expand outside my comfort zone. I wanted to try something that exceptionally contrasted with my own innate passions. Thus, the little vintage fashion ball was conceptualized.

Modern fashion-lovers and hipsters have never been my clientele. I spend my downtime at art shows watching  fellow artists attract these people through their own specialization. Slowly but surely, my viewing deepened my comprehension of the styles that exult man-made creativity.I saw how a little mesh sphere could be seen as a necessary fashion accessory due to its shape and multipurpose use; how old-fashioned ideals led to romanticism represented by a worn necktie. The combination of these ideas led to my eureka moment- why not use wire crochet, a modernized historical skill, on top of those multifunctional fashion spheres to create my own versatile piece? A "mesh with a hairdue" was born.

Creating this piece was another matter. Luckily, most jewelry stores stock these popular little mesh balls that many jewelry artists use. All I had to do was figure out how to make an asymmetrical wire crochet cap, or hair due. Basing this structure of my wire crochet bird's nests, I toyed with the black top's tension and shape until it fit perfectly. What I did not expect was the difficulty attaching the wire crochet top to the mesh ball. Over 1.5 hours and 30 attempts later, I had successfully woven the the piece together. However, my unforeseen Herculean task did win in one aspect: I have to leave one thin black piece of wire showing along the side leaving tears swelling in my inner perfectionist eyes.

In the end, inner mesh, wire crochet hairdue ball boy was created. I had triumphantly left my creative comfort area to form a retro-based fashion piece that could appeal to a contrasting clientele. This piece is currently searching for its ideal audience at Trap Door Boutique where it eagerly awaits its permanent home.

(As always, I can always create a sibling via custom orders. Feel free to adopt one at its Etsy listing.)