Jagiello turns trash into treasure

Delicately comparing rusted bottle tops to tiny mudcake crabs and craving a representation of Port Hedland's iconic salt pile into a discarded plastic milk bottle, Pennie Jagiello oozes inspiration.

The Melbourne-based jeweller is the first artist to take up residency at Spinifex Hill Studios.

Strongly influenced by the sea, Jagiello creates colourful jewellery or what she terms "wearable art" from collected and recycled items.

The first piece she will create from her visit to Port Hedland will be from the plastic and aluminium packaging of her in-flight meal.

Usually Jagiello would refuse a meal but, nursing a broken foot and taking anti-inflammatory medication, she ate to try to stop waves of nausea.

Always conscious of the footprint she leaves on the environment, Jagiello packed as little as possible.

"I have always worked specifically in a way where I am not tied down to a studio," she said when the _Telegraph _ visited the South Hedland studio last week.

"Because I don't have the traditional gold or silversmith background I really wanted to have that point of difference.

"I have my tools in my bag wherever I go… they're very minimal so I really don't need very much.

"In terms of a footprint, that's the way I prefer to work so I can go anywhere I want… (and) I can just sit down, work and make."

Before arriving in Hedland more than two weeks ago, Jagiello had never visited WA.

"It's so exciting… apart from the very few things you learn from school (about WA) … I didn't want to research too much," she said.

"I really wanted to get up here and get my own sense of the environment.

"That has been a really great way of learning (about the Pilbara)."

To collect Pilbara-specific, man-made debris and natural items to create jewellery and objects from, Jagiello visited a variety of areas including Pretty Pool, 80 Mile, Twelve Mile, Four Mile and Six Mile beaches and the De Grey Station.

Waiting on buckets of salt from Rio Tinto Dampier Salt, Jagiello said it would be a key feature of the work she created during her residency.

"Part of my project will form primarily around the salt … there will be a lot of saltscapes, seascapes," she said. "There will be a collection of wearable pieces and object-based pieces. Everywhere you walk there is something new and you want to spend as much time with and at it as possible."