THE EYE'S OF SPARKLE ©️
SPARKLE© 2014/2015
Part of the Celestial Collection
Sparkle© belongs first to Jodie Murtagh and Ika Sarna, without whom this piece would only exist as an idea. Jodie is a highly creative stylist in her own right, running her own successful business in Warwickshire for years — and it shows in every frame. She didn't just model the piece; she understood it, holding a stillness and a directness that let each stone catch the light exactly as it was meant to. Ika Sarna's photography captured that precision perfectly, translating the entire concept — crystal, contrast, camouflage — into something that reads as fine art rather than fashion.
Why This Is Celestial
The Celestial Collection is built on phenomena that sit at the edge of the knowable world — light behaving in extraordinary ways, the boundary between the visible and the invisible, the science of things that appear to transcend ordinary physics. Sparkle© belongs here because every stone on those butterfly glasses is doing exactly what the aurora does, what the opal does, what the nebula does: catching light and transforming it into something that could not have been predicted from the materials alone.
A diamond does not contain colour. But cut it correctly, place it in the right light, and it produces colour from within — the same diffraction physics that governs the opal, the butterfly wing, the upper atmosphere at dusk. The butterfly glasses are a collection of cut stones, each one a small prism, each one splitting and throwing light in its own direction, the whole surface alive with shifting, unpredictable colour. That is celestial. That is the light of distant stars translated into crystal and set in a butterfly frame and placed across the eyes of a woman in a camouflage jacket.
The rose tinted glasses see the world as they wish it to be. The eyes of sparkle see nothing at all — and in that blindness, produce more light than anything around them.
"Through the eyes of sparkle. Not naivety. Not optimism. Something altogether more radical: the complete surrender of ordinary vision in order to become, for a moment, a source of light rather than a receiver of it."
Now look at these. These glasses do not tint anything. They do not filter the world or soften its edges. They do not allow the wearer to see at all. Every stone, every facet, every dripping crystal drop faces outward — the world looking in at a surface made entirely of eyes, while the wearer inside sees nothing. Blind to everything. Appearing to see from everywhere simultaneously.
That is not naivety. That is something far more radical. It is a complete surrender of conventional vision in order to become something that transcends it.
"Sometimes artistic people do not have an immediate answer and just go with what guides them at the time. These glasses were made because something said they should be made. On a functional and practical level they serve no purpose at all. But art rarely does — and that is precisely the point."
The Celestial Glasses — A Handcrafted Wearable Sculpture
These glasses were made entirely by hand. The Celestial form — with a hint of the butterfly markings, that double wing silhouette spanning both eyes — was constructed from a pair of old sunglasses for the base frame and then covered entirely in individually placed stones: crystals, emerald green faceted cuts, black cabochons, silver settings, dripping crystal drops suspended beneath. Every stone placed by hand and salvaged from once loved broken jewellery. Every element chosen for how it catches and throws light rather than for any functional purpose.
The result is an object that sits at the precise boundary between eyewear, jewellery, mask and sculpture. It is all of these things and none of them definitively. It cannot be categorised, which is exactly what makes it interesting.
The butterfly element within the Celestial form is not accidental. The butterfly in almost every culture represents transformation — metamorphosis, the soul, the transition between states of being. A creature that is one thing and then, through an extraordinary internal process, becomes something entirely different. The butterfly does not improve itself. It dissolves itself completely and reassembles as something unrecognisable. These glasses ask the same question of the person who wears them: what do you become when you surrender ordinary vision?
"The viewer could see what they wanted. Looking through the many eyes of perspective — because every stone on these glasses resembles a small eye, looking outward, while the wearer within sees nothing at all. Through the eyes of sparkle. A different take on rose tinted glasses entirely."
Nature Against Warfare
The choice of a real UK army camouflage jacket as the garment for this shoot was not incidental. Camouflage exists for one purpose: to make the wearer invisible, to dissolve the individual into the background, to deny presence. It is the opposite of art. It is the opposite of the butterfly glasses, which announce their presence from across a room, which refuse invisibility, which demand to be seen.
The tension between the two is the whole point. The most delicate, light-catching, jewelled object imaginable placed directly against the most utilitarian, function-driven garment there is. Fragility against conflict. The butterfly landing on the battlefield. And the butterfly entirely unbothered — sitting there in complete stillness, catching the light, looking outward from its thousand eyes while the military context tries and fails to diminish it.
Nature against warfare. Beauty surviving conflict. It is one of the most powerful contrasts available, and it arrived, as the best creative decisions do, without a fully articulated reason. Something said: the camouflage jacket. And it was right.
The Hair — Precision Against Chaos
The hair in this shoot is a study in precision. Jodie's natural hair is actually quite curly. A geometric pixie cut, sharp at the fringe once straightened, architectural in its form — the kind of cut that usually requires absolute confidence in the scissors and a complete understanding of how structure and bone work together. Although these cuts do work better on straighter hair, some clients and models are more than happy to work against that flow — precision ultimately compromised, and enhanced, by the nature of curl. Curly hair has a mind and will of its own.
Against the wire sculpture and the jewelled glasses, that precision is doing something specific. It is the calm at the centre of the composition. The hair does not compete for attention. It provides the foundation from which everything else can operate — a fitting stillness for a fellow stylist and creative in her own right.
The Wire Sculpture — Published Editorial Work
The wire sculpture is a separate handcrafted piece — fine wire, red and black, bent and wound and knotted into a web-like structure worn across the face. It is not hair. It is not jewellery. It sits, like the celestial butterfly glasses, in a category of its own: wearable sculpture. An object made to be worn on the body rather than displayed on a plinth, but which functions as a piece of fine art rather than as an accessory.
Where the celestial butterfly glasses speak in the language of light and sparkle and feminine delicacy, the wire sculpture speaks in something rawer. It looks like a snare. Like a web. Like something both beautiful and dangerous simultaneously. Worn across the face it obscures and reveals in equal measure — the eye visible through the tangle of wire, looking out from within the structure, contained and watchful.
This piece was published in an American magazine. That recognition placed it in the company of serious editorial work and confirmed what was already evident: that it operated at the level of fine art as much as fashion.
