Guest Post (Phylicia Gilijamse)

Finished and unfinished Tak pieces on my bench

Making

I am about to graduate. My final presentation will be on February the first. So right now everything is chaos! My graduation Project is called “I want Tak” and the project consists of one hundred necklaces that seem identical but are all unique if you look at them carefully.

The repetition of something presupposes that there is or was an original. I am interested in working with the principle of the copy instead of the original.

If one hundred people were to record the same song from the radio onto a cassette tape, the song would appear to sound the same on all tapes, but if you were to analyze all one hundred tapes, you would hear differences in all one hundred recordings. Background noise, quality and clarity; even though each contains the same song. Additional sounds are added and details from the original are lost. The work I am making somewhat resembles this effect.

I have never really been interested in producing series in larger quantities. In fact, I enjoy producing my work myself, this means I can produce a smaller quantity then when I would use intermediate goods. I am working on the theme “copy”, so it seemed appropriate to develop a series that would actually reach more people than the pieces that I normally make. A series that is relatively easy to produce, yet unique. An affordable series consisting of unique pieces. Better yet, unique copies!

The enamel I use is light transparent and a bit stubborn, which I normally wouldn’t like. In this case this particular enamel, helps me to make all the pieces slightly different from each other. Somehow it is impossible to make to perfectly homogeneous pieces with this powder, all the parts are basically imperfect. The sizes of the ornaments are the same and the colour is about the same, but they are all a bit different, all with their own flaws.

Wearing Anne Achenbach’s jewellery

Wearing

Today I was wearing a necklace, or a pendant made from a bike, made by my dear friend Anne Achenbach. She took an old folding bicycle and sliced them in to elegant pieces. Her series consist of brooches and pendants.

Kolor Exhibition Cologne

Viewing

For the last past weeks I have only been working on “I want Tak” and haven’t had a lot of time for other stuff. But there was one exhibition I visited last week. It was a mixed exhibition from students who study on the FH Duesseldorf departments; Photography, Architecture and Product Design.

The location was one of my favourite things about the exhibition. The Exhibition was in an old cream factory in Cologne, Germany.

http://kolormagazin.de/home.html - http://www.peterinderkiste.de/

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What a great post!!! Thanks a bunch Phylicia!!!! Totally Rocking!

I first came across the "I WANT TAK" project on the AJF blog. It was just so nice to see something so fresh and new, and as I've mentioned before, I was totally sucked in by the concept and the marketing. Brilliant! I've placed my order and can't wait to receive it in the post in the coming weeks (I hear Miss Baker has two coming in her direction). Whoo Hoo! There may still be a few left, so I reckon you too should support this great project.

I can't wait to see what Phylicia does next.

Cheers - Z

ps. Just a heads up. You might notice that some of the links aren't in English, thats because Phylicia lives in Germany. ya.