Atmosphere Collection
Atmosphere not only encompasses the scientific gases that make up the space around us, granting our bodies the necessities of warmth and breath to survive but notably extends to a state of mind, an inner sensation that simultaneously saturates all people in a shared physical or mental space. In this way, atmosphere transcends the notion of individual feelings as unknowable entities, making a collective whole of their beholders. Emotions become shared en masse, dimensionally sweeping, physical, and synchronously social, resulting in a collective of bodies that relate to one another in any given situation.
The Atmosphere Collection of gems and metals depicting the individual parts of the bubble we all constitute, an all-encompassing feeling of togetherness, that while rarely recognized as an equalizing and connecting force, surrounds us without waver. Timothy Morton describes atmospheres as renderings, a conglomeration of elements that become one all-embracing cadence or tone. Through an atmosphere, one can see or feel memories past, or future hopes not yet realized, presenting impossibilities as perceptible appearances. Looking at the gold and silver crescents that make up this Vimeria collection, there is an air of comfort, the curvaceous metal forms gently hug their gems acting as the atmosphere that defines them. Without their atmospheres, the gems become minuscule, almost imperceptible entities, awaiting someone or something to fill their perimeters.
These gems, as participating puzzle pieces in the panorama of their atmosphere, reject the definition of an isolating subjective emotion thrust upon them. Like humans, they belong to the meaningful embrace of their metal, a situation that extends an unbiased feeling that cannot be manufactured and elects itself based on its social dimension. Air and atmosphere are intrinsically linked, with undefined moods within the air manifesting into a particular atmospheric condition.
The fluid organic shapes of the Atmosphere Collection can be attributed to the unplanned nature of the human experience. Atmospheres envelop us without a human say, like the weather that visually defines the spaces around us remains unpredictable, yet inescapable. Nature and atmosphere’s symbiotic relationship prompts us to use the weather and its elements as physical definitions of a collective mood. Like a thunderstorm, an atmosphere is felt by all people within it instead of an individual inner feeling, both holding the power to attune peoples’ inner workings in a certain way. We may often overlook these forces that form infinite linkages between us and others, forming a communal involuntary human experience where feelings become collectives.
Words by Kasia Halawa
Photography by Anna Laskin