Anna Vlahos, 2014, Greece

Black Sea, white swan (earrings)

Living in Greece, my work is influenced by the history here, the jewelry and art objects that come out of the ground as though they grow down there. I think about the ancient artisan and how they viewed the natural world around them, their inspiration, and how their work was swallowed up by the environment for thousands of years.

It is the metal that survives the best, and in my work I want to use the materials that were available to those artisans, along with the techniques they utilized for working with metal. Choosing metal, I get to work in the same way as an artist thousands of years ago.

With the techniques used, the metals, and the application of thousands of years, the metal becomes something organic, and reminiscent of a natural object.

Silver, fine silver, 24 karat gold, azurite, cinnabar, malachite