About The Forest Adorned
The Forest Adorned is a creative practice drawing from a love of nature, passion for making, and a deep respect for the human impulse to adorn throughout the ages.
Two jewellery ranges reflect two distinct expressions of this appreciation: the Tasmanian Native Botanical range is a direct and literal reference to the natural environment, while the contemporary range is abstract in nature and experimental in style.
About the maker
Having been raised between two places - a forested valley at the north end of the Wellington ranges, and Melbourne’s inner north - it took many years of vacillation to decide where was home. In the end it took leaving-taking - an extended period of travel in in 2016 with the intention to not return - for the forests, mountains and rivers to make their call heard.
The Forest Adorned arose from trusting an intuition, a creative impulse toward making work that draws on the unique beauty of place - big river country on this island lutruwita - and honours my own deeply embedded ancestral practices of adorning the body with meaning made manifest in silver, brass, bronze and gold, as was the wont of the early people of Europe.
I have studied and practiced visual arts for most of my life. I left RMIT University in 2004 with Diploma in Visual Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts, where painting, drawing and black and white film photography were the major points of enquiry.
Between 2006 and 2017, I studied and taught yoga, meditation and yoga therapy.
In 2017 I again returned to study, completing a second Diploma in Visual Arts, this time specialising in jewellery design and production.
A visit from Miss Margie during the early stages of a vintage caravan renovation. (Image courtesy of Dee Taylor-Graham)