Written by Alex Zutt
The past year, it is likely, will be remembered as a year of losses. Too many of us have lost loved ones; many more have lost birthdays, holidays, jobs, precious time with our families and friends, our favourite pastimes, the joy of making new friends at a bar or a coffee shop. But there is one thing which the pandemic has helped, at least a little while, to preserve, and which I, at least, have found myself appreciating now more than ever.
I mean the natural environment which is so spectacularly on display this season: the trees budding and spreading their leaves; the sky blue and the weather warm; the flowers springing up in our yards...
It is from nature that Toronto artist Maria Gabrieleva draws her inspiration. Her bangles, rings, necklaces and earrings, which are made primarily of wood and carry bold names like "Transcendent Elegance" and "Quintessential Power", have all the rich layering and twisting textures of their material. "There is so much richness in even a square foot of birch," she told me.
Gabrieleva was raised by professional artists, and art was everywhere around her as she grew up. At a young age, she tailored clothes; in high school, she gravitated toward jewellery and textiles. Then she discovered Constructivism, an artistic movement that emerged in the Avant-Garde alongside the Russian Revolution. The Constructivists wanted to recreate art from the material on out, just as the Bolsheviks wanted to rebuild society from the worker on up. They prized bold compositions and geometric forms, and believed, like Da Vinci, that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Inspired by their example, Gabrieleva started to envision jewellery that would release the vitality and beauty of natural, accessible materials, like wood. The only trouble was figuring out how to bend and press the wood into the designs she envisioned.
Ted Hunter’s Thin Air Press technique provided the solution. Gabrieleva met Ted at OCAD U, while she was pursuing her Bachelor’s in Design. “It brought my vision to life,” she said of the Thin Air Press. The result was a series of cuffs that have a kind of rustic royalty to them; earrings that expose layers of wood like the layers of sediment in the earth; and most recently, a bangle of wood resin embedded with wood shavings and the fragments of a mirror.
What draws people to her work? “I think it’s that in a world of mass production,” she said, “where everything is fast and driven by technology, people seek out that touch of personality, that tactility.” It’s a sentiment that rings especially true today, when the digital world seems to colonize our attention more and more each minute.
And there’s one more thing, I think, that we can all appreciate: the reminder to go out in nature, and celebrate it.
See neostructivism.com and @neostructivism for more of Maria Gabrieleva’s art.
Written by Alex Zutt
Images courtesy of Maria Gabrieleva, curated by Taryn O’Grady.