Making individual jewellery requires a lot of willpower and much passion. Interview with Haldis Scheicher by Klimt02

Tell us about your background. What were your first influences to be creative and become an artist and what has drawn you to contemporary jewellery?
At the beginning of my artistic work, there was a passion for making sculptures. During my training (in sculpture), I became acquainted with several jewellery artists who inspired me to begin to work in this direction myself. Jewellery artist Johanna Hess-Dahm at the 1988 Sommerakademie in Salzburg, Austria, was one of the main people who influenced me in those early years. I got to know her while participating in a sculpture workshop at that Sommerakademie. The year after, I joined her workshop, and it was a wonderful inspiration for me. It was there I discovered the passion for seeing the beauty in everyday objects, a passion I have felt till today. Later I worked with different jewellery makers, which inspired me and guided me along my chosen path.


What are your general thoughts on the contemporary jewellery world (education, market, development, etc.)? Where do you see opportunities and where dead ends?
As I'm also a teacher at KMD-Herbststrasse, Abendkolleg für Schmuck, Vienna, I'm quite close to young jewellery makers. I know the difficulties in working in the handcraft sector nowadays. I think to keep on making individual jewellery requires a lot of willpower and much passion. It may always have been like this anyway...but as I see it, the situation is getting harder.

 
Thinking about your career, what role do technology and digital formats play in your artistic development and communication?
New technologies do not have such a big importance for my personal work. In some ways, I continue to work in a very archaic manner...I’m less interested in technology and tools than in concepts and stories. To realize such stories, I prefer to use my two hands and not much else. One thing that I am using, however, to create small series is the technique of casting...this is really useful if you want to create several variations on an idea. As far as my role as a teacher goes off course, I make an effort to keep up with new technologies, also knowing that many young people are very addicted to them...and also because it is a way of quite easily realizing many projects for them. Although digital tools are certainly very useful for communication, I, nevertheless, use few of them. Of course, I don’t still write letters by hand (although I wish I had the time to do so)....but I am quite aware of social media like Facebook, etc. Maybe I'm missing something, but I prefer the peace of using fewer media tools. It’s possible I will change this one day, but I don’t really think so. At the end of the day, the exchange I have with other artists, physically or with one of the few tools I use, is important for my life and my work and I cherish such communication. 


How has your work changed over the past few years and what are you excited about these days?
Many things have changed in my work...and many things haven't. Somehow, I find that I often keep to similar "stories" and solutions for them. But of course, my work has undergone change and development. For one, there has been development in my perfecting certain techniques – a factor that influences the realization of things and, further on, the design of these objects. For another, change in my surroundings, be it political, artistic, critical, or whatever type influences my work.
What is currently exciting to me? In my recent work, certain kinds of everyday objects again have me excited...A pair of old Nordic skis and old ski poles delighted me and inspired me to start the collection. Several other objects crossed my path and told me they too wanted to join this story. So, at the moment it is the same passion as in the beginning...keeping my eyes open and seeing the beauty of "Things".