deceit of ownership. In a slideshow of personal images she played
for me, the same i960 turquoise Chevy Impala appeared again and
again in different locales, finally crushed like a can. It’s her old car,
and the loss was devastating to her. But in the morose delectation
of nostalgia, Brooks appeared to take pleasure in these extravagant
emotions. “I’m absolutely terrified of losing things,” she told me.
And that’s why she takes comfort in her tattoos. “I can own them
in a completely different way than I can own any object,” she ex-
plains. A self-described hoarder, Brooks showed me some of her
impressive and odd collections: pantsuits, rhinestone sunglasses
and brands of canned meat (Spam). “I find power in accumulation.
It is an inextricable piece of who I am in the world. With only a few
things, I tuck them away to keep safe.
... If I am lucky, they will
become a hoard.”
The urge to collect small, talismanic objects is something many
jewelers share, but Brooks channels the impulse directly into her
signature compositions, which are miniature hoards themselves.
Her 2008 Confection series is Brooks’s response to finding a stash
of carved ivory roses on Ebay, sold at a fraction of their worth.
Brooks treats these rare white buds like a cake maker would frost-
ing, smothering her surfaces with them. The pieces that result are
a gluttonous indulgence. Her
rosewreath branch,
a wreath crowded
with ivoiy rosebuds, includes tiny diamonds, set on delicate springs,
that quiver and swoon when its wearer moves. More than a piece
of jewelry, it is a prop, and to wrear it is to attract an audience.
But how much is too much? Echoing what Jay-Z once rapped
to his girlfriend Beyonce, “That rock on ya finger is like a tumor,”
Brooks’s brooches and necklaces bulge malignantly from their
w'earers. Some observers consider that an ostentatious display or,
even worse, a facile conflation of wealth with status. When Brooks
attached little silver bows on springs to her w'orks, she told me,
colleagues “wouldn’t touch them.” But she welcomes and challenges
this initial revulsion. Brooks knows that her jewelry is not for the
timid. Setting “jewelry” and all of its tarnished associations in quo-
tation marks, Brooks’s jewrelry is for people like her, those self-
identified “hard-core romantics” willing to abandon disbelief.
Mimi Luse lives in Brooklyn. Her writing has appeared in
The B rooklyn
Rail, Art Papers, Black Book, Corduroy Magazine, The L Maga-
zine
and the blog BushwickBK.
+
siennagallery.com
Above:
bubblegumheart
, 2009,
brooch, stainless steel,
vintage rhinestones,
14k gold, copper,
vitreous enamel,
2% x
2V2
x 1V3 in.
058 american craft
feb/m ario
www.journal-plaza.net & www.freedowns.net
