Jaeger-LeCoultre: The Made of Makers Project
Brendi Wedinger is a multi-media artist located in Los Angeles who is renowned for her work in 3D digital arts, sculpture, and floristry. Jaeger-LeCoultre is continuing to extend its cultural world by announcing the newest part of its Made of Makers project, which is a new collaboration with Brendi Wedinger.
The Made of Makers project investigates and expands upon the conversation that naturally occurs between horology and art. This is accomplished through a series of partnerships with artists, designers, and artisans from fields other than watchmaking. The curriculum targets artists who share the principles of Jaeger-LeCoultre, which include originality, expertise, and accuracy. The programme also places an emphasis on nature as its central theme, and it seeks to explore new forms of creative expression using a variety of materials and mediums that are frequently surprising.
The artists and inventors in question, much like the watchmakers of La Grande Maison, have a profound reverence for the past, which serves as both the basis for their creative endeavours and the launchpad for their groundbreaking work. This year, Jaeger-LeCoultre is extending its exploration of the realm of contemporary art by collaborating with an unexpected new creative partner.
Brendi Wedinger is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer who works out of Los Angeles. Her digital artworks, which are displayed in three dimensions, blur the line between reality and fiction. She uses nature as her primary source of inspiration, with a particular focus on biodiversity, sustainability, and renewal, as well as a particular fondness for flowers. She then combines a variety of elements to create a new and surreal visual reality that is almost tangible, occasionally abstract, frequently highly sculptural, and always emotionally captivating.
A deep connection to traditional craftsmanship guides Brendi Wedinger’s creative process, despite the fact that the virtual world she creates and the technical instruments used to produce it seem to be the opposite of the organic world she depicts. “Rather than using a computer programme to design the work from the outset, I always begin by using the technical tools to hand-sculpt the larger three-dimensional elements, such as the petals of a flower, and hand-draw the fine details. Once I have completed this stage, I use a lot of mathematical equations to create textures, transparency, and layering effects,” she explains. “What drew me to the digital medium is that it gives me more tools to play with and a wider scope for experimentation, so that my work becomes a more expressive homage to nature rather than a literal representation of it.”
Jaeger-LeCoultre commissions a unique piece of art for each Made of Makers partnership. The company extends an invitation to the artist to represent a concept that is of interest to the Maison via the medium of their particular trade. Given Brendi Wedinger’s profound connection to the natural world, it was self-evident that the subject matter of the new work would be nature, which is one of the key values of Jaeger-LeCoultre, and flowers in particular.
As is the case with all of the Made of Makers partners, Brendi Wedinger spent some time at Jaeger-LeCoultre’s residence in the Vallée de Joux prior to beginning work on the commission. During this time, she learned about the many watchmaking techniques and explored the natural environment that is located in the vicinity of the manufacture. She created her new piece, which is a sequence of three surrealistic flowers, by combining aspects from every facet of the visit that she had participated in.
“Everything about that visit—from the wildflowers in the fields, to the incredible complexity and tiny scale of the watch components and the patience and skill of all the different craftsmen in the manufacturing—was like a romantic fantasy world, so far from the lightning-fast pace of modern life,” says Brendi Wedinger. “Aside from the natural beauty of the valley, I felt very inspired by the high-complication watches and the unique details you find in them. I wanted the flowers to be complex and one-of-a-kind, like the watches, with all of the beauty and immense detail that can be found in both.”
All three pieces are idealised tributes to a range of flowers that can be found in the Vallée de Joux in different seasons, as opposed to a specific species that can be found in the wild. “When people look more deeply at each work, they will see that every element is recognisable and traceable to a natural flower, but I remixed and layered the details to emphasise their surreal nature,” Brendi Wedinger explains.
The flowers were to be digitally rendered in one of the precious metals that Jaeger-LeCoultre uses. This intensifies the surreal effect by creating a hyper-realistic illusion of the shadows and reflections made when light falls on polished gold. Another important aspect of the commission asked for the flowers to be rendered in. In the process of creating this piece, the artist has purposefully experimented with contrasting ideas, such as the contrast between the organic softness of nature and the cold solidity of metal, the digital and the physical, the ephemeral and the static. This has resulted in the addition of subtle layers of tension and intrigue, which have made each piece more emotionally impactful.
A play on the botanical tradition-based approach has given each flower official Latin names along with formal English equivalents. In order to establish a connection between the Reverso and the history of the Maison, Jaeger-LeCoultre has given each flower an official name that is an homage to the year in which the Reverso was first created.
In order to develop Flos Montis Fluit (Flower of the Mountain Flows), also known as the 1931 Golden Poppy, components of poppy, alpine pasque, and grass of parnassus have been utilised in the process.
Combining poet’s daffodil, red hemp nettle, and late spider orchid results in the creation of Gemma Vallis, also known as the 1931 Golden Orchid. Gemma Vallis is literally translated as “The Jewel of the Vallee.”
Combining water mint, pincushion flower, and alpine thistle, the Rhapsodia Petalorum Alpinorum, also known as the 1931 Golden Thistle, emerged as the third bloom. This combination is also known as “The Rhapsody of Alpine Petals.”