Dawn Cai

My work reflects my private world. As I grow and make significant progress in my life, finding that more and more memories and dreams are forgotten and lost, It is important to intentionally construct some spaces to reflect those dreams and preserve beautiful memories. I stubbornly believe that the existence of these "spaces" can always remind me. They feel like a safe deposit box in a bank, safeguarding my private worlds. In this space, most of the memories I preserve are related to people I have encountered in the past, and some are my fascination with certain objects.

My jewelry series "Live on in the memory" is related to those memories. In this series, I have created multiple exquisite small boxes of different shapes, which represent my cherishment of the items inside the boxes. The items inside the box include people whom I have not seen for a long time or cannot see again and my past dreams. Those representative shapes I carved that can evoke my memories, such as "the most beautiful eyes I ever seen“, “the fascinating smile which makes me difficult to forget”, “the dress she was wearing when we first met". These are precious memories to me, and I hope they can be properly preserved. Therefore, my necklace has become a medium to carry and tell my private stories.

I carved these shapes from wax as the main character of my work. They are presented in different angles and shapes to achieve a rich and vivid effect by using a combination of mixed media materials which were wax, brass, silver, wood, and Topaz. These different materials not only provide the pieces with different textures and temperatures, but also present different levels of beauty in color.

This series of jewelry carries my private stories, and each shape represents my past memories and dreams. I have placed these memories and dreams in every little box so that I can savor them anytime.