Conversations in Metal: The Sculptural Stories of Jacky Oliver
- Florènia Magazine
- Mar 14
- 7 min read
Jacky Oliver’s work exists at the intersection of historical depth and modern lightness. By treating steel with the meticulous delicacy usually reserved for fine jewellery, she creates sculptures that act as conduits for conversation—where the physical weight of the metal is superseded by the emotional weight of the story it tells...
They say the most enduring relationships often begin with a bit of friction. Was working with metal 'love at first sight'?
Absolutely not, I hated metal when I started working with it in my Foundation course. I loved working with gardening wire, but when we were shown the workshops, I found it a crude, unmanageable material.
When I started my degree at Middlesex Polytechnic, I realised it could be manipulated carefully with control, which I loved. Ever since, I have tried to extend my knowledge of different ways of working with it, by taking lots of short courses, blacksmithing, silversmithing, enamelling and more recently, micro pulse arc welding.
On my foundation at (Middlesex Polytechnic), degree ( At Middlesex Univeristy) and MA ( at the Royal College of Art) I was taught by some of the leading contemporary jewellers of the time, Ros Perry, Julia Griffith Jones, Pierre Degen, Caroline Broadhead, David Watkins and Onno Boekhoudt, later I studies blackmithing with Andrew Smith and enamelling with Elizabeth and Jessica Turrell, who have all been very generous with their knowledge and support.
Your exploration travels have taken you to so many places. Do you still find yourself looking for inspiration everywhere you go? Was there a particular place where something hijacked your imagination and changed how you look at your craft?
Inspiration always finds me, rather than me needing to look for it. It can come from briefs for exhibitions or commissions, or reading a book, or just taking an idea that I already started with, for a walk. This metaphorical walk could be on a page or just simply making, remaking, refining and then further developing. I initially struggled to understand how to make my work my own. My tutor, Pierre Degen was hugely supportive, and he suggested I apply to be in an exhibition at the Crafts Council, What is jewellery?
At the time, I was looking at using the body to adorn itself, squeezing flesh and looking at the patterns it created, in what was normally considered to be undesirable ripples or folds of the body. When I was selected for this, I decided against taking a place at Goldsmiths University to become a teacher and went to the Royal College of Art, hoping to develop more technical skills. However, after an extended time studying there, I developed a series of linear steel pieces which were silver soldered, which clearly has led to what I am doing today.
These pieces were linear interpretations of the internal muscular structure of the body.
I gain a thorough understanding of this by studying to be a fitness instructor, I was really fascinated by the body and how it worked, it was also important for me to create pieces that celebrated the body, but also could not be ignored by the wearer, indeed it determined how the wearer would feel, they could only wear the piece, when the wearer was holding a particular stretching position, which was in turn outlined by the from of the piece. You can see examples on my website.
One of the many things I really love about working with steel is that a piece is rarely finished. I sometimes think a piece is finished, then I photograph it and realise that a line or angle is wrong, and I will be able to alter it. Sometimes I have exhibited pieces, but this opportunity allows me to see the work with new eyes, and I can then bring it back to the workshop and add to a piece, and other times it will be cut up and redeveloped.
As part of my Queen Elizbeth Scholarship sponsored by Bendicks chocolates, I have travelled to Nova Scotia in Canada to work with Kye Yeon Son, to Snowdonia to develop silversmithing techniques with Rauni Higson, to West Dean College in Sussex to develop boxmaking skills with John Norgate, in London I have discovered amazing patination techniques with Adi Toch and then I went to Birmingham to learn TIG welding for copper and bronze with Kevin Grey. Next week, I will return to Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, not only to develop my skills further, but also to work with the undergraduate students.
What is your creative process? Can you tell us about ‘the horse and its jewellery?’
I have worked on a number of really interesting commissions, where I have explored archives and then developed ideas through drawing and model making, searching for relevant forms that I could make linear structures from. I always construct numerous variations of the forms.
One project I really enjoyed was ‘Horse Power’ for the Somerset Rural Life Museum, where I was asked to create an installation that celebrated ‘how harnessing horse power transformed agriculture. I looked at a lot of horse-related items in the archives, phoughs, reaper binders, harrows, but got carried away looking at the blinkers that horses wore in the field to prevent them from getting distracted.
The blinkers in the collection had a small brass detail on them. I decided to use the same materials that the pieces in the collection were made from, so I used steel, brass and leather. I got the brilliant Jessie White to make some leather details for me. This meant that I had to get some pieces to her quite early on, at the point where I had thought each interpretation of the blinkers would be the same proportions as the one in the collection.
When she sent me a photograph of the leather pieces attached, I loved what I did, but it made me realise that this repetition of scale wasn’t visually very interesting. I realised that being more playful with the forms, changing the scale, leaving some elements out, and abstracting elements would be more visually intriguing, and so I started playing around much more creatively.
The final installation was suspended from the roof of the Abbey barn (a part of the Somerset Rural Life Museum) from a large hoop that was 3.2m wide. This allowed visitors to walk into and be surrounded by the pieces.
Since the exhibition, some elements have been adapted for domestic settings, on the client's walls or hanging from stairwells. But most of the installation has been reconfigured and is now part of the permanent collection at Somerset Rural Life Museum.
Sometimes pieces are created with lots of meaning layered up in different aspects of their form and surfaces, whilst other pieces, which develop from these, are pure explorations of composition, balance and line. I created one piece which celebrated a solitary bee, Bombus Culumus, for an exhibition ‘50 Bees’. For this piece, I researched the history and habitat of this bee, which is now extinct. I spent lots of time looking for images of abandoned mouse burrows, where it used to build its nests.
After months of unsuccessful research, I eventually wrote to Dave Goulson, a university professor who has written many books about bees. He kindly sent me photos of the kind of burrows these bees would have lived in, and I quickly abstracted the form, but it was important to me that it started from the real thing.
I created a network created by a series of circles that echoed the tunnels created by mice, and then shone a light on this and drew around the shadows, these shapes I then used as outlines for solid forms that had etched details of the habitat faoured by bombus cullumus, the plants, the geographic areas, when it was last spotted, as well as who it was named after. A few years later, I had the opportunity to create work for an exhibition that was purely aesthetic. I chose to further develop the interacting circular forms and have created a number of pieces that originated from this piece.
Your finished pieces possess such a refined, architectural elegance, yet the process involves heat, dust, and heavy lifting. Do you find a certain joy in the 'messy' side of the workshop that the gallery audience never gets to see?
My workshop is complete chaos; I am naturally messy and have every surface filled. There often isn’t even room in my workshop to put a cup of tea down. I love my workshop, it’s a space where I can put all my work up and constantly reflect on it, considering why a piece works and how it could be improved. This can often lead to me revisiting a piece and reworking it.
I don’t mind having dirty, rough hands, but I hate the cleaning off of the steel wire that I need to constantly do; it creates dust, and I have to put on goggles and a mask as well as put on a loud extractor. It’s why I need to have an individual workshop at the Cockpit.
However, I absolutely love soldering, I still get a buzz every time I see a small pallion ( small piece of solder) melting.
I have recently started using a micro pulse arc welder, which doesn’t have the same beauty of molten solder, but it means the metal doesn’t need to be cleaned up in the same way, so there are lots of positives and possibilities I am looking forward to exploring with this technique.
Beyond your own making, you spend a great deal of time teaching and guiding others. There is a real kindness in sharing your craft—what is the most rewarding part of guiding and watching a student?
Working with others is amazingly rewarding. I often feel I learn as much from those I work with as they gain from me. In teaching a process, it makes me question something that I often do intuitively, not really thinking about it.
Discussing ideas, other artists, exhibitions and other references always makes me feel really inspired. I love working with people of all levels and ages, and particularly helping students to explore ideas through a range of materials and processes. I helped set up the undergraduate Design Crafts undergraduate course at De Montfort, where students worked in metal, ceramics, textiles and glass. I absolutely loved seeing students take ideas into different workshops and working with them to explore how ideas translated into a range of materials. I try to get my Foundation students to do this, although I love working in metal myself, I think that for others, they can learn so much from working ideas through in different materials and processes. I really enjoyed my year as Bunhill artist in residence, where I had a studio where I couldn’t work in metal, which allowed me to explore my ideas more freely through model making, drawing and collage.
On Foundation, it is amazing watching the journey of students as they start to understand where their strengths lie and apply for a degree course. I get so excited about them going off to start their own creative journey, and when I meet them years later and see what they have achieved, it is so rewarding.
