Lavanya Goyal

Ladybug Jewelry Plate

I am currently a high schooler in Chicago, and I love to make art with my hands. Making ceramics out of clay, putting rings together made of wire and stone, or even simply drawing. The piece above is one of my dishes made out of clay named as a ladybug jewelry plate. At my school, I am privileged enough to be able to create art like my ladybug jewelry plate. I do not usually have the resources needed to make such a project, and so I am very grateful to the art program at my school for being able to create like this. I decided to create this piece because I have a love for jewelry. Earlier in my second semester, my school was having classes online and so I needed to pick a project that I could do at home. I chose wire rings. I made almost a million of them, even in my free time because it was so much fun (I even made rings while watching Reign on Netflix). I made rings out of gold, copper, silver, black, and platinum colored wire with stones ranging all over the rainbow. But all of a sudden we were back in person and covid started to reduce here in Chicago. What was I going to make now that we had our ceramics class in person? Well, what would be better than a jewelry plate for all the jewelry that I made? I started to design. At first, I wanted to create a 3D cat centerpiece out of clay that would stand in between the jewelry, but as I designed more and more sketches and ideas, I eventually came up with the design above. I chose ladybugs because I like ladybugs, it’s really that simple. I am virtually afraid of all bugs in existence (this does exclude ants, but ants are ugly, don’t @ me). Yes, this includes butterflies. While its aesthetic is beautiful and I’m in love with it, if a butterfly tries to fly near me I will be activating my fight or flight. And so now we have ladybugs, a bug that is not scary to me and kind of adorable (automatically my favorite). I also decided on pink because it is one of my favorite colors (my favorite colors are blue and pink), and pink and red are basically soulmates.