From 8th to 27th September 2020, I and my friend Meira Rauta held ‘Leaves & Love – Treasures of the Winter Garden’ which was the continuation of our ‘Leaves & Love’ exhibition last year. You can read about it in my blog post here.
The venue was Helsinki Winter Garden, and the exhibition took place at the cactus room of the beautiful glass house built in 1893. This year, we got a list of plants that are a part of Helsinki Winter Garden’s botanical collection and these became the source of inspiration for our jewelry pieces.
I and Meira are plant lovers and enjoy visiting the Winter Garden, so it’s been truly wonderful to have our exhibition there. The name ‘Leaves & Love Jewelry Exhibition’ sums up our love for the botanical and jewelry world. When creating a piece inspired by a plant, I study it and translate what I feel about it into a sketch, and then into the three dimensional form.
My love for plants started with the gardens of my parents and grandparents. Plants are essential for our lives, yet often they are overlooked and taken for granted. With the exhibition, my aim is to transform the beauty of the plants into wearable art pieces and hopefully that way I could bring interest and awareness to the plants diversity that we need to treasure.
For Meira, Leaves & Love – Treasures of the Winter Garden has meant a lot and she’s glad I got this idea for Leaves & Love exhibition last year. She shared the same excitement about holding the exhibition again, especially that it was connected to the plants of Winter Garden. The name of our exhibition told us and our audience what a treasure nature is and we should value and protect it more.
Due to the situation, there were special arrangements to our exhibition. There were two phases, the first phase displayed the full jewelry collection (8.-12.9), and the second phase displayed the jewelry photographs & archives (13.-27.9). We knew that many people including our friends and family members wouldn’t be able to attend the exhibition, so we also held the online edition of the exhibition on our Instagram pages.
Astari G. Swatantri instagram.com/svvajewels
Meira Rauta instagram.com/rautameira
I’m very grateful that the exhibition went smoothly and we received truly wonderful feedback. Thank you to Helsinki Winter Garden for the opportunity, thank you everyone who visited our exhibition at the venue and online! We look forward to our next collaboration!
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