A J The­o­lade

"... fire­sticks ... knife ... stone carv­ings ... they are what a woman needs to 'carve a life for her­self'"–Claris­sa Pinko­la Estes, Women Who Run with Wolves

With fire, carv­ing knives, big and small, and with the ob­jects avail­able on a small is­land in the Caribbean–cal­abash, iri­des­cent bee­tle wings and a di­ver­si­ty of stones–Bar­bara Jar­dine has been carv­ing out a life.

The hand-craft­ed jew­el­ry, vas­es, pre­cious ob­jects she makes, tell the sto­ry of a woman artist who has to find the miss­ing pieces of her­self, pieces mis­placed when her cre­ative self is over­shad­owed by, among oth­er things, her oth­er roles of wife and moth­er; how it can be a painstak­ing task to per­form the alche­my that will make her whole again and what is pos­si­ble when she com­mits to the task of re­build­ing any­way.

"My work speaks for me," says Jar­dine, "but it isn't self-con­scious."

Telling Jar­dine's sto­ry in words has part­ly been the work of oth­ers, who have bro­ken in­to the artist's soli­tude and have been as­tute enough to ask the right ques­tions.

In 2006, Judy Ray­mond (cur­rent­ly T&T Guardian ed­i­tor-in-chief) wrote the book Bar­bara Jar­dine: Gold­smith, which at­tempt­ed to make con­scious the psy­chic process­es that un­der­lie Jar­dine's work. It al­so show­cased Jar­dine's ex­tra­or­di­nary craft in the full-colour pho­tog­ra­phy of Michele Jorsling.

In 2010, Mariel Brown filmed The Soli­tary Al­chemist, a doc­u­men­tary about Jar­dine which al­so cap­tures her in process–griev­ing the past, cre­at­ing the work that will heal her, timid­ly shar­ing that work and her­self with the world.

Both the book and the film, which Jar­dine cred­its with help­ing re­alise how spe­cial her work is and giv­ing her the courage to be­come a more pub­lic per­son, re­count Jar­dine's ear­ly child­hood in "the rar­efied en­clave" of the oil-field beach-camps in south Trinidad, which mould­ed the mind of the artist–gave her the room to climb trees and ex­plore the liv­ing land­scape that sig­na­ture her work–bee­tles, drag­on­flies, snakes and or­chids. There is her fa­ther too, "a bril­liant sto­ry­teller," who read fairy­tales il­lus­trat­ed by British "Gold­en Age" il­lus­tra­tor Arthur Rack­ham, to Jar­dine and her two sis­ters–some­thing that led Jar­dine to first be­lieve that she would be a il­lus­tra­tive graph­ic artist.

The care­free days of life in Trinidad come to an end when Jar­dine is sent off to a British board­ing school at the age of ten, and on­ly vis­its home once every three years. Al­though she de­scribes her­self as "al­ways artis­tic," Jar­dine re­alised that be­ing un­usu­al in any way would make her a tar­get for bul­lies, and says that at school she was "reg­u­lar –not par­tic­u­lar­ly aca­d­e­m­ic, good at sport and art and pop­u­lar."

"Al­ways go­ing to be an artist" and "most com­fort­able with a paint­brush," Jar­dine fol­lowed the usu­al tra­jec­to­ry for those want­i­ng to be artists in Eng­land in the late 1960s. A foun­da­tion art school in Guild­ford, Sur­rey fol­lowed her sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion, and it was here that Jar­dine dis­cov­ered the jew­eller in­side her­self.

Tak­ing refuge from stu­dent protests that marked the pe­ri­od, Jar­dine, who on­ly want­ed to fo­cus on her work, stum­bled across an adult evening class in jew­el­ry-mak­ing, about a mile away from the school. She in­vit­ed her­self in.

"I did my lit­tle cop­per ear­rings and enam­el dust and that sort of thing. I liked very much work­ing with the met­al on a small scale," she says. "Hav­ing dis­cov­ered that I loved that, I geared my port­fo­lio to that, but it was like a kind of mock-up of tin­foil, fur and stuff like that, 'cause you don't get the skills to build re­al jew­el­ry. Any­way the art col­leges were look­ing for ideas rather than fin­ished pieces."

Al­though den­i­gra­to­ry of her ear­ly pieces, her ideas must have giv­en a glimpse of the artist-jew­eller she could be­come, be­cause Jar­dine was ac­cept­ed in­to what is now Lon­don's Cen­tral St Mar­tins, Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts, "one of the few places that could qual­i­fy you back then as a jew­eller," the same place where the Sex Pis­tols first per­formed in 1975 and has among its alum­ni James Bond ac­tor Pierce Bros­nan and fash­ion de­sign­er John Gal­liano.

Cen­tral St Mar­tins was fol­lowed by the Roy­al Col­lege of Art and, says Jar­dine, "when you get there you know you are in an elite group." It was the height of a vi­brant Lon­don artis­tic scene, where the Bea­t­les were a back­drop to an ex­per­i­men­tal world of self-ex­plo­ration through drugs, mu­sic and East­ern re­li­gion. Jar­dine spent her ear­ly adult­hood in the thick of it, liv­ing in places in west Lon­don like West­borne Grove, Lad­broke Grove across from the Is­land Records record­ing stu­dio, and a small apart­ment just off the Por­to­bel­lo Road, in Not­ting Hill Gate, which re­mains the home of fa­mous mu­si­cians, ac­tors and artists.

"It was bril­liant to be young back then. It was just so ex­cit­ing with­in that bub­ble.

"But I came back home dur­ing the sum­mer hol­i­days and fell in love with a Trinida­di­an."

A Trinida­di­an with whom she had a sum­mer ro­mance some years be­fore, and who her par­ents had tried to keep her away from be­cause of his rep­u­ta­tion as a "bad boy."

It was a piv­otal point in Jar­dine's sto­ry: it was the first time since she had be­gun to pur­sue her craft in earnest that some­thing seemed more im­por­tant. She con­densed her three-year mas­ters de­gree at the RCA in­to two years, des­per­ate to get back to the man she would mar­ry. Her ur­gency, how­ev­er, did not stop her from win­ning the Artist of the Year award, at grad­u­a­tion; and one of her fi­nal pieces, the War­rior, which be­came part of the Vic­to­ria and Al­bert Mu­se­um's per­ma­nent col­lec­tion in 1982, was show­cased in Vogue mag­a­zine.

None of it stopped her from leav­ing the UK.

Asked about the de­ci­sion which com­plete­ly al­tered the di­rec­tion of her ca­reer, which seemed poised for cer­tain suc­cess, Jar­dine says, "I held my­self in ab­solute­ly no worth what­so­ev­er, I meant noth­ing to me ...My whole fo­cus be­came him."

The del­i­cate craft­ing nec­es­sary to cre­ate the War­rior was oblit­er­at­ed by the ne­ces­si­ty to make ends meet. She be­came a moth­er, and while she was en­dur­ing what would be­come years of "up­ping and down­ing" and all sorts of "grief and hu­mil­i­a­tion," Jar­dine's art be­came a shad­ow of its for­mer self. She still used lo­cal ma­te­ri­als like re­cy­cled tur­tle shell, but to make items like hair­combs and bracelets, things that would sell quick­ly and eas­i­ly.

The jour­ney back to the work she had start­ed when a stu­dent on­ly be­gan when her 15-year mar­riage end­ed, with her hus­band leav­ing her for a younger woman.

Mak­ing sense of her loss and grief in a tor­tured cre­ativ­i­ty pro­duces pieces like Meta­mor­pho­sis (1987), a neck­lace with a woman emerg­ing from a co­coon, made out of black coral, ibex horn, bee­tle cara­pace and pre­cious stones; In Memo­ri­am (1994) a pin made of black coral, re­cy­cled tur­tle shell, gold and sil­ver, which jux­ta­pos­es a skull against the deep red of an an­thuri­um; and Heigh-Ho, My Heart, a jew­el­ry box shown in Scot­land, crowned by the naked body of a woman crouched in the foetal po­si­tion, made out of a tagua nut, above an egg of am­ber.

"It was such an emo­tion­al piece," says Jar­dine about Heigh-Ho, My Heart, "ter­ri­bly vul­ner­a­ble."

Jar­dine de­scribes her work as an "or­gan­ic ex­pres­sion, very hon­est." Rather than fo­cus on her pain, she al­lowed her work to ab­sorb her, "pro­tect her from in­tense vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and from think­ing too much." The re­sult was that her in­ner process­es were ex­ter­nalised in pieces she cre­at­ed.

The ex­hi­bi­tion in Scot­land, the prepa­ra­tion for which, Brown fol­lows Jar­dine in the doc­u­men­tary The Soli­tary Al­chemist was an­oth­er turn­ing point. "I was se­lect­ed as the di­nosaur," says Jar­dine of the ex­hi­bi­tion, which main­ly show­cased artists us­ing mod­ern pro­duc­tion tech­niques.

"I am an an­tithe­sis of mod­ern pro­duc­tion tech­niques."

Heigh-Ho My Heart, was mount­ed away from the main ex­hi­bi­tion, in a cor­ner by it­self. It seemed to rep­re­sent the iso­la­tion that Jar­dine works in and the dis­tance she oc­cu­pies from her Eu­ro­pean peers.

"It was like dis­miss­ing me. I felt com­plete­ly lost, I was a stranger."

But it was al­so cathar­tic. It was al­most as though she re­alised that the con­tem­po­rary UK art scene wasn't where she was sup­posed to be. Jar­dine's past be­came all part of her jour­ney, no longer some­thing she re­grets. The Jar­dine who is seen weep­ing for a lost past in The Soli­tary Al­chemist, now says, "If I thought about the things I didn't do, I would slit my wrists." She was fi­nal­ly able to move on.

Last year, she fin­ished a two-year com­mis­sion which paid her a stipend and gave her the cre­ative free­dom to cre­ate what­ev­er she want­ed. She cre­at­ed 14 cal­abash vas­es, each com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, which "as­ton­ished" her with their "com­plex­i­ty and beau­ty."

She is cur­rent­ly work­ing with sea-urchins to craft a col­lec­tion of rings that she says will "be over the top," in their size, and the use of bright colours and gold foils. "What I am do­ing is now is kind of ex­per­i­men­tal, hav­ing fun, I'm mak­ing [the sea urchins] less vul­ner­a­ble."

Stronger her­self, Jar­dine has al­so turned her at­ten­tion to the lega­cy she will leave as an artist.

"It is about shar­ing. Art is on­ly val­i­dat­ed when it res­onates."

She speaks of want­i­ng to re­mem­bered as a Caribbean woman artist and be­lieves that as a Trinida­di­an mid­dle-class white woman, she has tran­scend­ed some of the la­bels that con­fined her work to a small au­di­ence. She would love her work now to be shown in a pub­lic fo­rum, but ac­knowl­edges the risk that would need to be as­sumed by ex­hibitors, be­cause of its mon­e­tary val­ue.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that through the sup­port of peo­ple like Mariel Brown how­ev­er, many of her ca­reer am­bi­tions have been re­alised, Jar­dine says "some­thing al­ways comes along." Hap­pi­er than she has ever been, she is con­tent for now to "love the chal­lenge and give peo­ple joy."