Gyrogami Blog - Precious Metals, Jewelry, Artwork

Organic

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Categories: Instruction and information; Experiences and daily life; Human nature

Word count/read time: 470 words; 2 minutes

This is not about food. If so it would generally mean something of higher quality made as pure and caringly as possible. Is organic food better for you? Most times, yes, but there are still so many loopholes and liars that it's anyone's guess. Enforcement is lax and the penalties are a joke, moreso now than ever.

That leaves what the spirit of the word means. One of the common (mis)uses is in arts and crafts. It often seems a catch-all to excuse shoddy workmanship or to explain why something looks off. Not stopping at ugly, it's the eternal optimist's way to describe low-quality goods in a "nice" way.

Who can argue with such an approach? The approach isn't the problem. Instead, denying the item's proper place in the reject pile is. In painting, the aspects of a brush stroke can be analyzed indefinitely. If a specific look is desired it can be compared, but to what avail except as an academic exercise. Or a forgery, of course.

Every time I hear organic I brace for what follows: crooked, unfinished, an average grade schooler could do it. Customers shouldn't be forced to wonder how unskilled an artist is; it should be other way around! High-ticket items need to be flawless in execution and look that way.

To a certain degree, some jewelry designs can get away with it. Maybe. But it's uninviting to describe it as organic, like it is suddenly beautiful or well-made because of a word. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but ugly is its own entity; ugliness ain't organic and don't call it anything but hideous. Organic better make it better but it won't save it.

Organic happens all on its own but art seldom happens by accident. If it can't be repeated then how did it become art in the first place? Designs incorporating randomness should be enhanced by it. Like how glaze drips down the side of a vase or a splash of paint on a nearly finished painting, but not on a crooked out-of-round vessel or plain canvas.

I "liberated" some spectacular organic sculptures, like my Cliff & Cave set. Read more in this blog. They're exactly as you'd envision not knowing otherwise. I couldn't have made them better on purpose, or at all, no matter the effort. Happening by accident enriches the backstory. This isn't the first time art has birthed from molten silver in my shop.

In other news, my jewelry is precision metalworking with organic elements. Handmade from reclaimed precious metals, it is free from pesticides, herbicides, preservatives, artificial flavors and colors, fake sweeteners and fats, GMOs, trans this, modified that, fillers, and all those other snake oil additives. Plus, you can meet the farmer at every show and have jewelry "grown" exactly to your heart's desire!

Posted by M: March 17, 2025

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