Olivia Wolf-Yamamura

Bio

I was born in 1985 in Berlin, Germany. I’m an autodidact when it comes to jewellery. Being a dentist, I’m familiar with the basics of metalwork and surface finishing techniques. During my student times, I was drawn to glass and took courses for turning glass beads in an adult education center. I started to rework jewellery and took basic silversmithing courses, too. I implemented a little goldsmithing corner in my apartment, and ever since, my armamentarium has risen with my interest in different techniques. After acquiring some practical knowledge over the years, I produced a small series of brooches, I would like to show publicly.

Statement

As a kid, I would sit by a gravel pile, collecting interesting stones for their shapes, surface structure, embedded lines, colours and haptic.
I love to collect.
My works are inspired by my daily findings, like acorn-collecting with my children or unusual fruits on a plant that grows on the next street corner. I have a fascination for fine details in natural forms. I could wonder about intricate shapes and textures in many things around me.
I love to experiment.
It can be exhausting sometimes to experiment with enamel. It’s always strange how ideas emerge. One discovers a procedure or a technique, and those are deepened but not completely mastered. Oftentimes, I don't know yet exactly where something will develop, the desired shape may not work in enamel and I keep trying and a different shape emerges. I'm like an explorer, a researcher. It's something that immerses me in my childhood and awakens the child in me. There is a fascination, an amazement and sometimes a surprise, a beautiful product of chance.