Merry Christmas from Aotearoa – New Zealand…

Merry Christmas from Aotearoa - Deanna Gracie ©

Wishing all my friends and clients a safe and happy Christmas….and many, many thanks for all your support and encouragement over the past year : – )

Love and best wishes from Deanna X

Wedding Rings for another happy couple…

A lovely couple from Germany sent me these images of them wearing the wedding bands I made for them recently : – )

Thanks Stefan and Denise!

Thanks for visiting!

Deanna Gracie

More New Zealand native fern images….

I captured these images of this gorgeous fern in the garden outside the art room at Hagley High last week : – ) I know I have already shown you lots of different fern images but what I adore about the New Zealand native fern is that each image of each fern is always so different. I hope you enjoy these images taken at night using a flash.
Deanna Gracie ©

Fern Leaf - Deanna Gracie ©

New growth - Deanna Gracie©

New Beginnings - Deanna Gracie ©

Experiments with interference colours and texture….

abstract kowhai Pod - Deanna Gracie ©

I had a great time experimenting with different mediums including black mica, fibreglass, tissues and gel mediums at a night class at Hagley High this term tutored by my wonderful friend Christchurch artist – Donna Steel. One of the things I enjoyed most was Gel medium which is messy and great fun – it binds things like tissue and photographic transfers to canvas or board. I also loved playing with interference colours from Golden products. They change colour from different angles – a bit like titanium, a metal I love to use in my jewellery designs. These pieces are all experiments I did in a bit of a rush – just playing with the product etc without any fixed ideas of what I was going to create. But I’m really looking forward to more experimentation and developing some ideas I have at home when I have some free time.

As this next piece was a work in progress I have now added some colour to Mauri life force and dirtied it up a bit – (the painting looked very stark and shiny before) -  so this image is as this piece looks now.

Thanks for visiting : – )

Deanna Gracie

Mauri life force - Deanna Gracie ©

Editorial in Metropol Magazine November 2009

An editorial in the latest issue of Metropol – thanks Metropol : – )

It’s a great magazine and you can now read it online http://www.metropol.co.nz

Thanks for visiting! – Deanna Gracie

Solo Exhibition – March 2010 – Sneak Preview

In between making special commissions I have also been working hard towards my solo exhibition in March! I have lots of wonderful pieces in mind and so I thought I’d give you a sneak preview of some rings I have finished : – ) These three scrummy “New Beginnings”rings in this textured ring stack are some of the jewellery I will have on display during the nine days. The exhibition will run from the 7th – 15th March inclusive at Cloisters gallery in the North Quad at the Arts Centre of Christchurch. More details will follow closer to the time. The rings in the ring stack are created with sterling silver and red gold. The exhibition is inspired by the beauty of natural New Zealand.

Proudly made from my heart and with my hands in Aotearoa – Land of the Long White Cloud : – )

http://www.Deanna .co.nz

Thanks for visiting! Deanna Gracie

Featured Jewellery Design #46 – Aotearoa Aroha pendant

.beautiful .natural .unique contemporary jewellery by Deanna Gracie

I wrote a poem illustrating some of the thoughts behind my “Into the Blue Nowhere” jewellery series.

Aotearoa – Aroha Pendant #11 from this series is created from sterling silver, 9ct gold, monel and garnet. I collected the feather from the beach here in Southshore and incorporated it into the design of this pendant. Perhaps the gull I mentioned in the poem left it behind on his journey into the blue nowhere?

All my jewellery is proudly designed and created by myself here in Aotearoa – New Zealand. Made from my heart and with my hand, no two pieces of jewellery can ever be exactly the same.

Into the Blue Nowhere

It’s a red sky sunrise!

High above the beach

a gull glides,

then soars,

and slowly disappears.

Out of the blue nowhere

I hear a faint haunting call,

then nothing but silence.

Waves reach high,

they hover,

then tip forwards

and gently fold over.

One floats towards me

as if in welcome.

It recedes and merges,

and disappears,

just like the gull,

into the blue nowhere…

Deanna Gracie ©

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Koru Inspiration….

On the way back from lunch at Governors Bay we stopped in at a New Zealand native tree nursery as I wanted to get a ponga tree fern to plant in our garden. I was a bit hesitant as to whether it would survive as we live quite close to the sea but  I’m sure it will be fine in the sheltered place we have in mind for it. This nursery had every type of fern you could imagine in the fern house and I was delighted to see so many with new growth. The new growth of a fern  makes a wonderful curving spiral shape as it opens and is the inspiration behind many of my koru designs. I took lots of images of the different colours and textures of the different species of tree fern and of the gorgeous koru shapes. The large tree fern in the montage is the silver fern – our national symbol : -

Pongas and Tree Ferns by Deanna Gracie ©

New Zealand native wood pigeon…

Hubby and I had a nice drive over to Governor’s Bay on Banks Peninsula for lunch the other day and stopped off at a lookout point by the Sign of the Kiwi. I captured an image looking over towards the Southern Alps. Look how much snow is still there even though it is meant to be Spring!  We can see the hills from where we live and I noticed there was even a dressing of snow on Banks Peninsula itself the next day. While I was taking photographs we heard a noise like a whoosh and looked over to see a keruru – a  native wood pigeon sitting in the tree close by. The whooshing noise is a noise distinctive to the native pigeon and it made our day to see this beautiful wild bird sitting so contentedly in the tree posing for the camera : – )
Thanks for visiting!
Deanna

Inspirational image…

I captured this beautiful ghostly image by chance last week – it reminds me of an xray : – ) This shadowy effect was left behind on a wall after a small garage fire – once a sign had been removed….. beauty can be found anywhere : – )

“Beauty is Everywhere” by Deanna Gracie ©˙