Michele Fox-Bell

Michele Fox-Bell is a Goldsmith, Artist and Art Historian working in the Abbey Road Studios, Athlone where she has just completed her first collection, ‘Harvest’, which opened at the Luan Gallery, Athlone in June 2019. She has extended her residency to research and prepare for a second exhibition of a new collection based on the scribbles in the margins of illuminated manuscripts.

A graduate of the Crescent Workshops, Castle Yard, Kilkenny, Michele has worked in the jewellery trade for many years. In 2011 she was delighted to have the opportunity to study History of Art and Architecture in Trinity College, Dublin. Michele is a mother to three wonderful boys Rían, Christian and Samuel, and is married to Simon.

Artist’s Statement

Michele Fox Bell is a goldsmith, jewellery designer and a community artist.

The jewellery she designs and makes begins in the atmosphere of memories; the peripheral ether surrounding blood bonds, fast friendships and 70’s platforms. Shadow bright yards and dark webbed garden shed corners, new cut lawns and almond scented bogs… and words.

The connotations attached to the word ‘precious’ make it one of the most diverse words ever spoken. It is in the objects cherished and stacked on shelves, under beds and in wardrobes. It is how we insulate ourselves towards loss. “I have a red silk thread woven through an 18-karat yellow gold ring. The thread is precious. It is Elizabeth”.

Few other objects can be worn so closely as jewellery, and fewer still can contain such a vast connection to the past, the present and the future. The jewellery one wears is a touchstone to these memories, its association personal and unchanging.