Monthly Archives: June 2020

Mellow Yellow*

Well, I’m on. As I type this, with every strike of the key, a weird buzzing in my left ear confirms that.  Yesterday was staples out and activation day and it was…OK. I was expecting worse. I don’t feel devastated.  I am curious. Maybe even hopeful??? And neurologically exhausted but that is par for the course.

People ask what the sound is like. It is very very hard to explain but go to about the 6 minute mark of this video where Peter Frampton is singing Do You Feel Like I Do and starts using his talk box. That is the closest thing I can think of to explain it. But for me right now, the words are nowhere near a recognisable as in his solo. This takes weeks.

So what does this proliferation of yellow jewellery have to do with ANY of this? I have to confess that I have been very afraid. Afraid this might not work; afraid that I don’t have the energy in me to take on the learning required; afraid that I was not up to another episode of digging deep. Afraid that none of the electrodes that were stuck in my cochlear would take. Afraid that I would  be left worse off than before. And obviously, the way to go…the way any NORMAL person would deal with this…was to explore that fear in jewellery form.  And it is most emphatically not that I associate yellow with cowardice. I LOVE yellow. Yellow is sunshine and confidence and fields of mustard flowers in Nepal and fields of canola in Australia and Vincent Van Gogh and amber and wonderful things! It is the second favourite colour after red of just about every Nepali women I have ever asked!! But…I rarely create with yellow and I even more rarely wear it. I was…afraid of yellow. So working with something I was afraid of, immersing myself in it to the extent that it was the only colour I could use, is kind of a symbol of facing my fear. I mixed many many yellows and just spent hours surrounded by yellow. Really looking at yellow. Feeling more confident abut yellow. Letting yellow seep deep into me. The way I need to do with this buzzing.

* Mellow Yellow, Do You Feel….anyone would think I was a child of the 60s!

Hear ye, Hear ye!

Last week on my sporadically frequented social media accounts I posted a photo of some pieces I made to mark the beginning of another journey! Most of you know that I am deaf as a post (diagnostic terminology) and that I could have got a cochlear implant years ago.  I finally got it last week (and can I just say that I had underestimated just a tad how uncomfortable the post surgery period would be).  This is very much the beginning of the journey because an implant doesn’t amplify sound like a hearing aid does, but transmits an electronic sounds. My brain has to be retrained to recognise this sound and this will take time and effort and more of that later. THAT starts with my activation tomorrow.

Back to the post. I decided, as you do, to mark the various stages of this journey with my making and made these pieces over the days before the surgery.  I wanted to incorporate the motifs of shells because the cochlear is a shell shaped structure and the cilia, the nerve endings.  I chose calming, gentle colours because I needed to be calmed and gentled!

I used a ball stylus to hand etch the shell designs then applied layers of the gorgeous Pan pastels. Then I used several ball styluses (stylii?) to make the dot and cilia marks before applying more layers of pastel.  I used Cara Jane’s lovely surfboard templates to make the earrings and a brooch held with a magnet. More to come as I negotiate the slightly daunting road ahead but I know the negotiation will be easier if done creatively!