Inside the Artwork: An Interview with Montreal Jeweller Claudia Gómez
In the realm of contemporary jewelry design, Montreal-based artist Claudia Gomez stands out for an innovative approach blending creativity, playfulness, and curiosity. In this exclusive interview, Gómez
provides insights into her upcoming showcase at the Salon des métiers d’art (December 7-17 at the Palais de Congrès de Montréal) and shares her creative process.
What would you like people to know about your work?
My approach is always evolving. I hope I never get to a place where I’m saying, oh, okay, this is it, this is the thing. I want always to be in a place where I’m looking for things that make me wonder.
Kinetics are important in my work as well. Some of my earlier pieces are very consciously in motion, with circles that could turn freely and independently of one another. And right now I’m working with spirals, and exploring how far can I take that. A spiral within a spiral, for example, or spirals woven inside each other.
I love the collection I’m developing for the Salon des métiers d’art because I’m playing with something that looks very simple … but the process of making it such may not be so simple! Even the form can raise questions. A bracelet may not look obviously like a bracelet – even though the lines are quite straightforward.
Another thing that I’m doing with this collection is working with a technique called cold connections, meaning that I try not to use fire to make it. I bend the wire, cut it, and make a piece just by turning the wire, without using heat, without using acid. I’m deliberately taking this more eco-conscious approach to processing everything, from creating the piece to packaging my work and selling it online.
What guides your creative process?
It’s all a process of pure exploration. I’m playing all the time.
For example, say I want to create a piece that is not very expensive. So I set certain constraints into what I am playing with, and that becomes something like a game of exploration. Or there may be a certain resistance in the metal that I have to work with and respect.
Or limitations with some other materials – like memory wire. For example, if I warm that up with fire to do some soldering, I will lose the tension in the piece.
It’s all part of the process of learning, understanding things. Of course you make mistakes. In the past, I used to work with fine silver all the time, until I realized that I couldn’t work with it because it’s so soft. So I had to learn to use, and fall in love with sterling. You make mistakes, and then you find different paths.
I’m also exploring an electrical process of soldering now that will let me preserve the tension I was talking about earlier. Every approach, every material contains mysteries.
How do people respond to your pieces?
I make jewellery that the viewer or the person who’s wearing often has to learn about first. In other words, a lot of the pieces I produce require some guidance — I need to explain to people what they are and how they are used.
Even just a simple square piece of wire may require some explanation. I mean, it’s a piece of jewelry, but what does it do? How do you put it on? That’s a very important and intentional part of my design, but it’s also a consequence of being a little bit different and aiming for that difference.
Given a wire piece, not everybody is going to understand right away that it is a bracelet … and that you can put it on like so, and that it stretches and keeps the shape as long as you don’t stretch it too much. Of course it’s very simple, but mysterious.
It’s a whole process of playing, and understanding how the materials are experienced. It’s the same for me as a jeweller – I go through the same process of discovery to be able to come to something that I feel comfortable with saying, yes, you can wear it – anybody can wear it.
This is also why I use models in different age ranges – so I can emphasise the fact that it’s for anybody. You don’t have to be a certain age. I’m not aiming to talk to someone in particular. Just someone that likes this kind of thing. It’s not about old or young, or X or Y, just the connection between us and what we think is beautiful.
Really the discovery process is everywhere. Discovery for me as I create, discovery for the person who’s coming to a piece for the first time, and then discovery as the relationship between the wearer and the piece of jewelry becomes clear.
Experience the artwork of Claudia Gomez at the Salon des métiers d’art, December 7-17 at the Palais de
Congrès de Montréal.
To book a private showing, contact claudiagomezatelier@gmail.com.