The special brooch created by Frances Stachl and now on sale
The special brooch created by Frances Stachl and now on sale
By Helen Frances
Whanganui jeweller Frances Stachl has created a sterling silver brooch depicting the Sarjeant Gallery to raise funds for the gallery redevelopment.
The silver brooches are for sale at the Sarjeant Gallery shop and feature the historic gallery with a star pricked in the sky.
The star representsthe Sarjeant's Thousand Stars project, part of the fundraising for the earthquake-strengthening and upgrade of the gallery. A special "star version" of the brooch has a small 24-carat gold accent on the star.
Stachl made the original brooch (25 millimetres in diameter) by hand and had a mould made for ease of reproduction. She hand-finished the casts in her workshop, just a block away from the Sarjeant on the Quay gallery beside the Whanganui River.
She made the original by piercing the shape of the Sarjeant Gallery and star detail with a jeweller's handsaw.
"One of the things that I especially like about the practice of making jewellery is that although there are some advances in technology, you can still work very simply, using essentially the same hand tools as a jeweller might have 500 years earlier," she said.
She has a long association with the Sarjeant, as a secondary school art student, then later working as a cleaner for a year or so in her early 20s when she began making jewellery.
"Last year I had the great honour of exhibiting my first solo show in a public gallery with Fiction In The Space Between at the Sarjeant on the Quay. The support the staff offered me during that period and afterwards has been enormous."
She has also received a merit award for the past two years at the Belton, Smith & Associates Whanganui Arts Review.
Stachl said having an institution like the Sarjeant in Whanganui was invaluable. It was there she encountered Warwick Freeman's
Feather, fern, fish and rose
series of brooches, contemporary works made using precious metals and traditional jewellery techniques.
Jeweller Frances Stachl is backing the Sarjeant redevelopment with sales of her new brooch.
"It is really important to me, as a maker, to have such a well-respected regional gallery in my home town.
"The creative and practical support the staff at the Sarjeant offer to local makers is quite special. As a resident, I love having a gallery that regularly changes exhibitions, and I also take great pleasure in sending out of town visitors in for a look."
And her experiences include moments of hilarity such as the time she fired a cork into the air with more glee than art at a Sarjeant Christmas function.
"It may still be somewhere on a high ledge in the dome. This was also the day that Craig Collier, a descendant of Edith Collier, taught me how to open a bottle of bubbly without firing the cork into the air."
She is looking forward to the many benefits the $34.9 million Sarjeant redevelopment will bring to Whanganui and to all art lovers.
"One of the really great things will be the increased storage space to store all those lovely objects and artworks. I believe the old gallery was getting rather cramped."
People who buy a brooch will contribute directly to the redevelopment of one of Whanganui's most iconic assets.
