Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
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55 ORNAMENT 35.5.2012 SCOUT (left) and JEM (right) PENDANTS of mixed plastics, oxidized silver; 11.4. x 3.2 x 3.2 and 3.2 x 2.5 x 2.5 centimeters respectively, 2009. waste material and turning it into something really beautiful," Donald reflects. Because she is always working with new materials, there are always new challenges to surmount, and new enquiries under way. How does the material respond to different techniques? How can it be reinterpreted, cut, folded, slashed, burned, or otherwise treated to become something entirely new? How does it read to the eye? How does it feel on the body? These investigative questions get Donald's creative juices flowing, creating a problem-solving loop of action and feedback. While some jewelers are turned off by the uncertainty and endless variables of incorporating a new material into their craft, Donald revels in it. Her Los Angeles studio is filled with objects and items in various states of completion. Small pods and cocoon-like objects of wound thread and paint mediums, large geometric sculptures made from red plastic straws, and experiments with a smoky blue plastic reminiscent of Roman glass are scattered about. Environmentalism and ideology aside, Donald does not speak of her materials in euphemisms. They are not the "found objects" of other jewelers, a term that implies some sense of mystery, discovery and even hidden value or meaning. They are "waste materials," "garbage." The fact that she holds them in such a practical, unromantic view makes their transformation into wearable objects of beauty that much more impressive. There is an inherent value to her materials, however insignificant, but it is what Donald does to them—the act of transformation—that makes them exemplary. In one necklace, a grouping of common, burnt sienna rubber washers looks IN THE GARDEN EARRINGS of mixed plastics, twenty- four karat gold, oxidized silver; 10.2 x 1.7 x 1.3 centimeters, 2011.