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Carefully reassembling broken trinkets into tiny insects and artwork. No two bees, bugs or beetles are exactly the same.

Over the past few years I seem to have inherited little bits and bobs from various members of my family. Nothing of any inherent value but mainly the scattered twinkling broken bits from the bottom of jewellery boxes along with my husband’s Nan’s sewing box…She used to be a seamstress when she wasn’t singing with various jazz bands. I packed the boxes of tiny useless talismans away in my studio for a long time feeling they were too precious to throw away but unsure how to breathe life back into them.

I made the first set of bugs just for me after a long meandering daydream about entomology and lepidoptery…about beauty and life and memory. I thought making my own boxed frame of iridescent creatures would be a perfect way to honour the trinkets I had been given and the people they had come from without having to look at a big useless box of broken jewellery. Then there was some left…so I made some more…then there was less left so I bought some beaded jewellery from a charity shop and someone else’s story was added to the mix…then another…and another.

Now all the bits have been mixed together in my bead box and I don’t know who’s story I am making my little bugs out of but that doesn’t matter anymore. I love the thought of all these people’s lives mixing together. The places the beads have been, the celebrations they have seen, tiny fragments of memories stitched together to make something more precious than its parts.

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