Circus Necklace by Cat Merrick

In low lighting, black spheres appear suspended in air. When the light catches the piece just right, the reflective glass spheres light up and reveal their true colors. It's a circus trick.

Cat Merrick deconstructs traditional jewelry themes of light and color with experimental materials like painting pigment and scientific lenses. When jewelry is referred to as sculptural, it is usually in reference to traditional lost wax casting and modeling technique going back to antiquity. Cat doesn't use a single construction technique in common with traditional jewelry and is instead influenced by the experimental optics of contemporary sculptors like Olafur Eliasson. In other words, it is sculptural, but in a contemporary sense.