Collaborations
A collaboration between Mallory Weston and Emily Cobb.
In their first collaboration together, Weston and Cobb created a life-sized sculpture covered head to tail with decorative scales. The cobra, a snake with a particularly hypnotic presence and distinctive hood, was chosen for the collaboration to represent a popular but often fearsome symbol found in jewelry throughout history. Much as a cobra uses its scales to distract and intrigue its prey, Ssssmiley Face entices the viewer to come closer to observe its sparkly, detailed surface.
The golden kaleidoscope patterns and smiley faces are pulled directly from imagery Weston uses in her intricately pierced jewelry. Cobb rearranged these shapes into the dimensional skin of a cobra using a 3D modeling program and a construction method she uses in her own work. The main structure of the snake was 3D-printed in five parts, and as Weston worked meticulously on placing the cut pieces of gold-filled metal onto the snake’s smiley faces in Philadelphia, Cobb applied the gold leaf to the kaleidoscope pattern in California (where she recently moved).