ANNABELLA PLANO
Annabella Plano
Chin Chin, No Crossing!
2025, can tabs, steel, silver, 68 x 57 x 7 mm
Leaf Piles
2024, copper, steel, 60 x 75 mm
Photography by Chris Bowes.
ARTIST STATEMENT
ANNABELLA PLANO
The ever-growing prices of precious metals have influenced my jewellery making practice by pushing me to work with alternative materials, helping me further the connection between my concepts and my making. Working with found objects has allowed me to let my materials inform how I approach my work based on their unique characteristics.
My piece, Chin Chin, No Crossing!, explores the theme of social connection, using can tabs that I collected from various family gatherings. By interlocking the tabs, I create a moving metal fabric resembling the flow of conversation and the moving energy of a social gathering.
Working with this material deepened the meaning of my work by allowing the can tabs to tell their own stories, acting as tangible memories of time spent with loved ones. Additionally, the tarnishing quality of copper as a non-precious metal informed the way I approached my work, Leaf Piles. This brooch is based on my fascination with how leaves fall and land, creating a form of collage as they gather in piles under trees. Embracing how copper darkens over time the more it is touched and worn, the brooch continues to change and evolve just as a leaf decomposes.
PROFILE
Annabella Plano is a multidisciplinary artist who focuses on jewellery and object making. She integrates her passion for craft into her work by combining practices and materials that do not often go together. Her love for crochet, sewing and collage are brought into her jewellery and object making practice to honour these undervalued processes and highlight their importance in her life. Inspired by small details in everyday life, she creates pieces that reflect personal memories, and experiences from childhood to the present.
