Bloomsday Celebration ~June 16th 2009

"Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past"

~James Joyce, Ulysses, "Scylla and Charybdis"

Tomorrow is Bloomsday and this year I have celebrated it through my other love, jewelry-making! For the James Joyce Quarterly I have created two Shadowbox centerpieces for their reading event and they are displayed above with pride. Also, here are some random Joyce inspired creations! Enjoy them, please check out the rest of my collection below! Thanks, Sam. Have a fabulous June 16th everyone!

"Proteus"

"Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawreck, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs" (U 37).

I call this piece Stephen's stream of consciousness. I fashioned and manipulated wire into quotations from the episode that I thought were important to Stephen's character: "modality," "snotgreen," "dogsbody," "mother," "death," and "water." For Stephen keys are also integral and thus symbolic. The feather is representative of Stephen's ambition to become a writer, an ambition he has given up in Ulysses, but voices in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There is also a small silver charm of a dog's body! The chain is tangled, just as Stephen's thoughts are jumbled, and the reader's experience of reading his thoughts is too(at least on my first try!). The pictures are somewhat difficult because this piece was the hardest to photograph clearly...how very Protean!

"Calypso"

"Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high. ---Mkgnao!...Mrkgnao! the cat cried" (U 55).

"Calypso," where we first meet Leopold Bloom, is full of so many rich images it was difficult to create just one piece for this particular collection series; however, I decided upon something simpler since several of my pieces were more involved and perhaps less wearable ("Proteus" is a prime example of this!). Bloom making breakfast, with the mewing of a persistent cat, seemed a nice place to start! The necklace quotes the "Mrkgnao!" of the cat and symbolically represents Bloom's morning. The charms I selected all are symbols presented in this episode which reverberate throughout Ulysses: Bloom's keylessness (i.e. the key charm), his Jewish heritage (the Star of David charm), his alternate identity as Henry Flower and flowers in general (the flower charm--in full bloom might I add!), and last but not least the tea kettle, which we return to in the end with Molly's monologue in "Penelope." A very wearable piece!

"Wandering Rocks"

"The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S.J., reset his smooth watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. What was the boy's name again? Dignam, yes....

* * * *

The cavalcade passed out by the lower gate of Phoenix Park saluted by obsequious policemen and proceeded past Kings bridge along the northern quays. The viceroy was most cordially greeted on his way through the metropolis" (U 219/252).

The necklace is very literal, made up of bits of rock and stone. Wound around the three strands of rock are two individual strands that weave around the necklace, much like the cavalcade (the black strand) and the Reverend Conmee (the gray strand) twine 'round the people of the "Wandering Rocks" episode who wander the streets of Dublin. And just as the Reverend Conmee and viceregal cavalcade do not corss paths, neither do the two strands of beads.

"Lotus Eaters"

"Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that....Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness" (U 71).

Brought to you courtesy of Henry Flower! These "(f)lowers of idleness" rest lazily on your neck and adds a sense of Victorian elegance and romance. It is the most classic, clean design in my Ulysses collection.

"Keyless Citizen"

"What comforted his misapprehension [Bloom's]?

That as a compentent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void" (U 17.697).

The most whimsical and humorous in my collection, the "keyless citizen" is made up entirely by two materials, paper and chain. To my great depair, I would not find real keyholes, it is an odd material to come by if you are not a locksmith, so I improvised and created the keyholes from paper which I treated with a deconstructing paint process to make them appear more like real keyholes. Keyholes...but alas no keys. Poor Poldy!

"Penelope"

"I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as abother and then I put my arms and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." (U 18.760-768)

I constructed the gray freshwater pearls around the metallic flower (it is unbelievable difficult to locate a rhododendron bead--I guess I will have to mint my own next time!) to represent the Moorish wall of Molly's memory/fantasy and strung pearls that were exotically colored. The "yes" in the necklace is shaped from wire and the key represents just one interpretation of Ulysses's ending: Molly and Bloom together again. This is my favorite piece in this collection. I think it captures some of the beauty of "Penelope."