Ken Bova

 

I am charmed by small treasures, ordinary everyday things.  I find scraps of colored or patterned paper, old maps and photographs, candy wrappers, bits of bone, board game pieces, broken tail light, funny rocks, and they are attractive and mysterious to me.  Collecting odds and ends, bits and evidence of moments past, I experience a peculiar pleasure, a delight in what is at once both precious and plain.  My jewelry examines the relationship between the personal and the cliché, the commonplace and the unusual.  It is a response to the quality of the materials and the associations they evoke . . . mystery, memory, people, places, and events.

I use what I call a soft tech approach to produce my work.  Collage, assemblage, and hand tool fabrication processes are direct and immediate.  They allow me to layer and overlap elements and images or set them side by side.  Through this process I can make new associations and visual meanings or enhance those already there.  Each piece is made individually, start to finish, so that it is a singular expression of the moment and materials at hand.  The objects I make are about remembering and reminding---that ordinary things can be extraordinary.