Sara Shahak
Published: 24.03.2025
sara-shahak.comBio
Sara Shahak lives and works in Petah Tikva, Israel. She has specialized in jewelry studies in Israel as well as in many professional master classes all over the world. She's been teaching jewelry making since 1996 and from 2011 to 2017 worked as a Sub-curator at Museum of Philistine Culture, Ashdod, Israel.Statement
My work is inspired by my love to metals alongside traditional silversmith processes.The Sharp Nature collection is characterized by experimentation and exploration of the possibilities of transforming materials and shapes. My collection is influenced by the visual vocabulary that we can find in nature. I try to sharpen it. My love /em>to metals makes me investigate industrial readymade objects, among them the readymade industrial iron bells. These playful, shiny and noisy objects are intended to be children's toys, decorationsand accessories for costumes. I know them since my happy early childhood. They were attached to every costume sewn for me for costumes holidays. Their sounds accompanied my childhood. I open, cut, bend and solder these hollow, hard, spherical and closed, cocoon shapes that fascinated and challenged me.
"The cocoon is a convergence that allows a work space ... nothing will move the larva away from its goal of becoming a butterfly" - (from Visions from Earth by James R. Miller, a selection of Chuang-Tzu writings, 476-221 BC, The Butterfly dream). Transformation of things emphasizes the constant birth and return of all life, from and to the shut condition of the cocoon, which is the larval source for all changes.
Through this transformation I made rough, but poetic, structures of necklaces and brooches and rings. All characterized with refined sharp ends and repetitive elements, in which I find strength and beauty. I change those strong iron shapes into flocks of butterflies and garlands of tulips' buds and thistles. I color them with torch oxidation, glass paints, enamel and lacquers. Solder them to brass or copper "branches", and sometimes refine them with natural wool, or various semi-precious stones/beads. Through this investigation of the industrial hollow shapes, harsh and rough structures were created. There I find beauty, poetry, and some answers to my existential questions.
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