Here's a short documentary made by my talented friend, David Haghenbeck, from Focus Cinema and Wild Film, for the first Art Clay Mexico exhibition. He and his lovely wife and creative partner, Patricia, photographed and filmed me in my Roma apartment in early September.
This is the english translation of the interview:
My name is Jennifer Musi and I am a jeweler.
It has has been 9 years this month since I began to make jewelry. I took a class in a government-run trade school, where I learnt the technical aspects of the trade: how to cut, solder, and learn all the basic skills you need to make jewelry with a few tools and a simple method.
I began to create from an early age. My mother is an artist, and when my sister and I were little, she showed us how to make things so that we would let her work in peace. She taught us every new medium she learnt. We learnt to make punch rugs, sew, knit, dye fabric and paint. So ever since I was young, making things with my hands has been natural to me.
I love Art Clay because I was first a painter and a ceramist, and my work as a jeweler is very graphic. Art Clay allows me to draw on a maleable substance and turn it into a piece that is hardened by fire. With my background as a visual artist, it is the perfect medium for me to make jewelry.
Art Clay registers every mark I make when I draw on a soft rubber mold. It is the best way to faithfully reproduce something. I love that I get to keep every mark I make during the building process: it registers fingerprints or crooked lines, and both can be part of the finished silver piece. I think that those details or “accidents” give life to a handmade object. It’s like when children draw, it’s their looseness and freedom which gives their art such energy and vitality.
For this show, I made 15 small amulets. Some will later become pendants or rings, but for this exhibition I decided to leave them as small frames. Every piece has a figure; there are animals, objects and people. I like that every one is a symbol: the hand represents peace or protection, animals are the beast within, they are all a part of us. I wanted to create a playful inner world.