Welcome to my home studio– let me give you a tour. This is my jeweller’s bench where I spend most of my time sitting on my bum. Beside me there’s always a display of little bits and pieces which will maybe someday become something. Here’s a bling bling project that I had been working on for a very cool client of mine, which has been put on hold. 

Here’s happiness in a box. Some links are on the way of becoming something, others are looking quite ready, quite ready to go. Lots of colours and textures. There’s tools and equipment and a very cool box of old beads I have been playing with that are keeping me happy. Beading, knotting, making findings and clasps for necklaces to wear my self happy during lockdown .

An ongoing project that I have, to do with kauri gum for the Kauri Museum and the experiments I’ve made with kauri gum/wood, CDs and resin. That’s what’s been keeping me busy these days.

I send you all lots of good energy. I hope to see you very soon at a fabulous opening at Objectspace as they always do, with their nibbles and their cheeses and crackers, the hipster beer, the beautiful people wearing awesome clothes and all that wonderful jewellery being worn, the art on the walls, the electric bicycles parked outside. All of that. 

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Chilean / New Zealander jewellery artist and educator, Maca Bernal has an MVA from the Otago Polytechnic Dunedin School of Arts. Possibly a  product of her Latin American upbringing during the 80s, Bernal’s gusto for plastic and her use of colour is unprecedented. Pre-pandemic she was teaching three days a week at the New Zealand School of Art and Fashion, (a new school resulting from a merger of Peter Minturn / Hungry Creek in late 2019). These days she teaches online and divvies up her precious real estate with two Honda superbikes in her home studio/garage.