My new jewelry line made from found objects and feathers. As of now they are all necklaces but I hope to expand into other types of accessories in the near future <3

More photos up on Myspace and Facebook

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These pieces are made mostly from found objects. What began as making cute "junk necklaces" turned into so much more: a question on the nature of value, an elaborate meditation on mental illness and a dialogue on the emotional life of attachments.

Hoarding is "a mental disorder marked by an obsessive need to acquire (and failure to use or discard) a significant amount of possessions, even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary."

My mother is a hoarder.

With every trip to her house over the past few years I began to collect bits and pieces of her "collections." Hoarders seem to create their own value systems, one where a rusty old paperclip or a beat up sweater have just as much value as objects socially accepted to be valuable. Discount outlets, thrift stores and television shopping channels are havens for compulsive purchasing; not because the items are actually needed but because they are on sale or cheap.

I wanted to question this idea of value and how these alternative systems are created. Here I create my own system but one where the objects live up to their inherent "potential" (although subverted). Where is the line drawn between "usefulness" and "excessive"? I sought to question the nature of emotions and possessions: how a mother could deprive a child of natural emotional development but attribute emotional lives to objects otherwise incapable of experiencing them? When you grow up with mental illness, everything is backwards. There is no normal. My mother's ownership and possession issues have extended beyond a house full of stuff into a full blow other world built around the emotional lives of objects. Its a delicate dance between these worlds...and I ask you: Where's the line drawn between beauty and squalor?

Love and light,
Kafka Vodka