Alex O’Connor came to silversmithing from a background in Fine Art and Sculpture. Accordingly, her silverware demonstrates how she merges an inherent understanding of aesthetic balance, form and composition with the specific disciplines of contemporary craft practice.
Functional considerations inform, but do not define, Alex’s pieces: vessels are a constant theme, as a means to explore ideas of ritual, containment, reflection and metaphor, and the balance between utility and expression. She creates single and grouped collections of pure shapes with subtly tactile surfaces, designed to celebrate the material, whilst attempting to evoke ephemeral sensations through the unique qualities of silver.
Alex’s recent collections respond to the powerful topography of West Cornwall, where she lives and works. Created through a process that begins with walking and observing, fragments of sensation become working drawings for contemporary silverware that brings together ideas of both our external and internal landscapes.
