"Body Candy": Decorating the body with beautiful or striking objects satisfies a number of desires all at once-- we enjoy them, possess them, use them to trigger memory, entice, shock with them... we reference history or other cultures, stimulate conversation and become noticed, enhance costume, arouse curiosity, and summon up more 'primitive' motives such as demonstrating kinship, "tribal" (family, group or club) relationships, and suggesting one's own "value" by 'wearing the wealth'.

Helen Compton sometimes 'works' silver, gold and brass in the usual ways-- cutting, engraving, embedding, soldering etc-- but more often uses a sculptural joining method called 'cold connection' : hanging, wrapping, winding, inserting, as in machinery: "I am drawn to the elegant and efficient ways gears move against one another ...Quiet motion, and Static suggestions of motion... taking things apart, re-joining them in different ways for other purposes.

...This extends to a contemplation of the body. Some of my jewelry utilizes real or fabricated body-parts both animal and human, presented as jewels as in prehistory.... Shown by itself a body part suggests dismemberment, sacrifice, tribal ritual or voodoo. Joined imaginatively they become symbolic, metaphoric, quaint, or humorous. I 'recycle' watch-parts, old brass and other bits I have collected all over the world... I frequently incorporate jade, coral, diamond chips, rubies, baroque pearls, other stones. Each piece is one-of-a-kind, although I sometimes produce variations on a theme until it evolves into something else."

 

Earrings, ear-studs, tie Pins, hair Sticks made of watch-gears

 

"Half-face" gold and brass pocket-watch pendant