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A full set of marbles
Tatjana Panyoczki isn’t afraid of losing her marbles. Having said that, the she priced one of her contemporary jewellery pieces called “Permission to lose my marbles” so high that it wouldn’t sell. She describes this creation as one of her creative light bulb moments. “I got a bag of marbles from a very good friend of mine and we had a bit of a discussion. She felt I was sometimes not quite on the same planet. Of course I took it personally but not in a bad way and I was quite struck by the marbles and the fact that they were my favourite colour too, sunflower yellow.” From this idea she made a necklace of black wax balls, the same size as the marbles with the sack of bright yellow marbles hanging as a proud pendant; just in case she does ever lose her marbles. But talking to Panyoczki is an experience that assures you she has a full set of marbles well installed. One of New Zealand’s foremost contemporary jewellers, she has a following that extends from her home town of Kaiwaka in Northland all the way across the world to her native Switzerland. She has a permanent presence in several New Zealand galleries that deal in contemporary jewellery and has solo and group exhibitions throughout the year both locally and overseas. Panyoczki’s work combines non-traditional materials with traditional metals such as silver and gold. She doesn’t use any stones for a number of reasons including that lapidary requires a totally different setup. But there is also a sense of working at the edges of what is commonly understood as jewellery in Panyoczki’s pieces. She finds inspiration in the mundane while leaving traditional jewellery to traditional craft jewellers. “I’ve worked with kitchen sponges, wax, paper and oh gosh, even mothballs,” she says. “I’m a huge collector of resources. I have tonnes of boxes of all kinds of bidybits. I love recycling things that other people throw away.” For Panyoczki, even the topic of what is jewellery gives rise to a series of considerations and debate. At the highest level she agrees that jewellery is “an object that relates to the body.” However from there things get less clear. “Its important to me that they can be worn although I don’t think that jewellery has to be worn. It could be a pocket piece that you just have in your pocket. I do feel that it has to relate to the body. A nice piece to hold or just a little treasure that feels nice in your pocket and reminds you that its there.” A recurrent theme in Panyoczki’s work is that of the play between the wearer controlling the piece and the piece controlling the wearer. Her cast paper brooches are just such an example. The brooches are made using cellulose which means the wearer has to think carefully about where they go and what they do. One heavy rain shower or splash while doing the dishes would spell the end of the creation. She has also worked with wax and paper combined and enjoys the play between the wearer and the piece. “Although the melting point of wax is around 70-80 degrees, it can soften at much lower temperatures which is really nice,” she says. “That just feels absolutely amazing as it takes on the shape of your finger, the moment you wear it.” The series of wax rings and bracelets incorporate torn strips from her notebooks that reveal preserved drawings and fragments of texts often in German. There is a hint of the wearer being allowed a private glimpse into her imagination and thinking processes – the warmth of their body subtly changing the shape of the piece to create a distant union between the wearer and the artist. For Panyoczki this is tantalising. “To think there are pieces that I make that will actually control what you do and what you wear. The first thing you have to decide is what jewellery am I going to wear and then everything else comes later – is quite intriguing.” Asked what her drivers are in her approach to jewellery, she talks about architecture as being a fundamental. With an architect father, one would imagine that she was tempted to work on a larger scale and create buildings and not jewellery. “I do know some of the less attractive sides of architecture but I love looking at it, I love being in a beautiful space. So I chose the body as the site and lots of my pieces are like mini-constructions.” A wig designer and make-up artist for theatre and film, Panyoczki retrained at Unitec having enrolled to do furniture design. However on a rotation through the different design disciplines she found herself inspired by the smaller scale and the materials of jewellery. She describes it as discovering a “love affair with precious metals” and still talks rapturously about the different ways in which she can work with this classic material. To date she has resisted the urge to travel the route taken by many other contemporary jewellers, the road away from jewellery and into large scale objects or sculpture. Instead she continues to search for the entrancing possibilities of everyday objects like Agee jar rings and lino samples, exploring the way in which they meet, join and relate to each other which she describes as “discussions with utilitarian objects out of context”. And then, once the piece is sold, she has the occasional thrill of seeing it worn by a stranger, influencing their decisions. Where to see Tatjana Panyoczki’s work: Piece Gallery, Matakana Eon Design Centre, Britomart, Auckland Fingers, Kitchener Street, Auckland, www.fingers.co.nz Masterworks, 77 Ponsonby Road, Auckland Avid, 48 Victoria Street, Wellington Red Art Gallery, 1 Bridge Street, Nelson Form Gallery, Cnr Montreal St & Worcester Blvd, Christchurch Inform, 158 High Street, Christchurch 
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