“You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.”
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
The Beast Will Out began as a modern-day myth - ‘A girl returns home from her working week. Her perception of physical reality disintegrates and she is met by three mythical birds.’
Traditionally the brogue was a rudimentary shoe worn by Celts who I imagined working the hard but immensely beautiful landscapes of Scotland and Ireland. This modern take on the design inspires notions of work and play - a harmonious balance of brogue and heel, designed and produced during Nicolas Ghesquière time at the infamous design house Balenciaga.
Balenciaga is fascinating because of their history of innovation in both design and approach to commerce. In 1917 Basque Cristóbal Balenciaga’s authenticity and nod to the Spanish Renaissance was an inspired moment in the history of couturier, which laid the foundations for the Iuxury fashion house. Historical research shows a potentially intriguing and ancient connection between the Celts and the Basques.
Bronze casting of Balenciaga shoe with velvet jewellery boxes
“A couturier must be an architect for design, a sculptor for shape, a painter for color, a musician for harmony, and a philosopher for temperance. ”
‘She observed that the anatomy of the birds was that of the dove or common pigeon, but with a stylized lion’s flowing mane.’ There is a religious connection with the dove in the story of Noah, and throughout history pigeons have played the role of messenger birds, especially in times of war. The idea of combining the raw power and authority of a lion with the freedom, purity and resilience of doves and pigeons made a compelling and symbolic subject.
The Messenger - bronze and black patina.
“Gender is in everything; everything has its Masculine and Feminine Princliples; Gender manifeests on all planes”
Throughout my time at the RCA I regularly ingested dimethyltryptamine.
The decoratively organic forms carved into her skull are a pale shadow of the hyper coloured details and movement witnessed during a DMT session. They remain the echoes, imprinted in wax and transferred into bronze, symbolizing the almost indescribable, expansive experience.
‘She began her transformation, morphing into a dove and then a lion, she felt her polarising energies flow through the eddies of space as harmonics of colour and vibration.
Metamorphosis - bronze and black patina.
“Everything is dual; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree, extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”
“The mind is brought into harmony with the spirit and includes the body, achieving an organic, harmonious unity of all aspects of the person’s being, what we might call ‘bio-psychosynthesis’. This is true spiritual alchemy”
“Buckminster Fuller explained to me once that because our world is constructed from geometric relations like the Golden Ratio or the Fibonacci Series, by thinking about geometry all the time, you could organize and harmonize your life with the structure of the world.”
Icos ring - 18kt yellow gold
Platonic solids are detailed in the philosophical subject of sacred geometry and the name derives from Plato’s Timaeus as the knowledge of the eternal. There are five platonic solids, of which I was drawn to the Icosahedron for its simplicity of form and reputed esoteric astrological representation of the Age of Aquarius, deep connection with the natural world, importance and flow of water.
‘She felt an affirming sensibility and auspiciously significant streams of thought. As they settled a great balance filled her with harmony.’
“Conditions are not invariable; terms are not final. Thus, the wise man looks into space, and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too much; for he knows that there is no limit to dimension”
“No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings”
Toward the Light - bronze black patina and grey lead glass
Being in a state of complete surrender humbles the mind. This is a realm where linguistics takes new shape and an emotional awareness transmutes into and towards a path of familiarity of knowing. Every doubt or un-serving thought appears with less importance and with this a new nature softly ensues.
‘A sudden event, an unavoidable moment of the greatest integrity, uniting all notion of time and space immersed in the universal waters of eternity. Once subsided, the conventional becomes the irrational and her perception of time become more precious than ever.’
“Water has a memory and carries within it our thoughts and prayers. As you yourself are water, no matter where you are, your prayers will be carried to the rest of the world”
Icos light - Grey lead glass
“The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish.”
“The human being holds a universe within, filled with overlapping frequencies, and the result is a symphony of cosmic proportion”
The Lotus flower is an ever-constant symbol of purity for its inherent beatuy, its ability to grow out of the mud, blossom every day and connect with the rays of the sun. A golden lotus carries the sentiment of higher states of being and relationship to the divine. There is a vortex-like structure that exists, functioning as an aspect of our higher nature. It is active within us and is the expansiveness that playfully encourages our growth.
‘ Day becomes night and night becomes day. Her perception of time and dimension alter. Her thoughts become feelings and in turn those feelings become uninhibited. She is sober and awakened but this time her perception has shifted and a view of immense and greatly widened perspective is present where possibilities are endless.’
Lotus Brooche, Pink amythist, 18kt gold petals
“If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.”
“The more she thought of things that pleased her, the better she felt. The better she felt, the better things happened for her. She began to realize that feeling well was the only thing of importance and that selfishness was the key to liberating all others. She understood that without the diversity, she would experience only complacency and limit.” - Abraham Hicks & DTW
“As the lotus rises on its stalk unsoiled by the mud and water, so the wise one speaks of peace and is unstained by the opinions of the world.”