Jim Charles

 

 

 

The Shadow Images series is composed of laser cut acrylic that is sandblasted and coated with enamel paint. Pin backs are inserted into brooches and necklaces are constructed using various rubber, plastics or other common materials to create bright and dynamic compositions.
Shadow Images series emerged through the documentation process of my previous work. While photographing work I had completed, I started taking detailed pictures that I thought were interesting. My previous work was made of silver wire and was difficult to photograph. It was cut, formed, melted, hammered, drilled, and arranged to form jewelry. These lines, loops, and connections all worked together, like a three dimensional blueprint, that when activated by the body, created animated movement.
While documenting the work, I became concerned with the visual experience of the work and the finality of photographing objects. What about the space the work occupies, the moments that went unseen or left behind? This idea presented an alternate existence or continuation of my previous work in the fragmented recreation of those pieces. I took those detailed pictures of the jewelry as they existed in an interactive state with the body or simply placed on the table. I used Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to extract new shapes, shadows, or remnants of the pieces and had them cut out of acrylic with a laser cutter to form new jewelry. They became objects about the object that I could juxtapose with one another. They are earrings that are silhouetted images of other earrings, necklaces that are fragmented images of other necklaces. I could move back and forth between photographs and objects, much like the process of my previous body of work.
The premise for my previous work involved discovery, through process: moving back and forth between drawing and the object. This idea, this looping back and forth, is integral to my overall practice because the process leads to discovery as discovery leads to process. My work evolved and materialized through the spontaneity of drawing, the direct and immediate experience with the material and the vision to see them both together in an alternate context or path.