THE COLOUR GREEN. Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, December 2014.
Green.. the colour of life, renewal, nature, and energy, of growth, harmony,
freshness, safety, fertility, and environment.
"Green is the grass and the watermelon skin, fourth colour in the rainbow, the emeralds in a ring."
[Extract from the poem GREEN by James Hörner]
Kirsten Albrecht is the managing director of Kozminsky, a learned scholar of psychotherapy, a mother to four, a grand-mother to two.
Her life experience, her expertise in reading people is both inspiring to watch and also to partake in. The depth of her appreciation of ‘substance’ is infectious and her love for 'the colour green’ is a perfect match for her grain.
TIME WITH JOAN was fortunate to witness the beauty of the immense collection of Kokeshi on parade at Kirsten's home, some 1000 in total, this home a nest for much beauty and abundance. The idea of looking from outside-in to Kirsten paralleled with her ‘store life’ at Kozminsky. The soundtrack of The Last Emperor filled the atmosphere with serenity and riches, and above us slept a tawny frogmouth owl, oblivious to the goings on.
I don’t feel like I’m very zen inside me, I feel like I’m not a zen person, I’m glad that I look that way sometimes.
We need to be hit in the face with a piece of two b' four to learn things, we don’t learn them easily we learn them because something happens that changes us and I think that that’s how my life has been, that I’ve learnt as I’ve grown. But I think probably because I did embark on a self discovery journey quite a few years ago through psychotherapy I was able to get a fairly good understanding of who I am, including all my neuroses.
I hadn’t done a lot of things I wanted to do when I first could have done them, so I thought I really want to go back and do Psychology …the reason I did it was really because I was hit by a piece of two b’ four .. and I was off work for a year and did a lot of thinking in that time and realised that things that really matter to me were people [um], and that’s been interesting with working with jewellery because jewellery and people for me are inextricably linked and the relationship that I create with with people and jewellery are inextricably linked.. I don’t [sort of] see them as separate .. I feel like my integrity and truthfulness with my client whether it be phsyco-theroputic clients or jewellery purchases is the same, it’s congruent, so I feel like I’ve got congruence. And, I feel like sometimes in life that’s one of the hard things to have, to be congruent in life between how you’d like people to see you and what’s actually going on inside you.
I thought about Kokeshi as I was sorting them and putting them out today, and I think that at some level the Kokeshis' work for me as a response to what I would describe as not a really happy childhood. I think there’s a lot of girls in there that make up or things I feel I didn’t have as a child. I think I have had more of a childhood collecting those than I did as a child.
My father had a huge decorator in him, [so] when we were growing up we lived in Mentone which was just a little seaside town, and Dad made a ‘mini Europe' in the beachside town Mentone…. Other people were eating chops for breakfast or lunch and I was having sauerkraut and these things I couldn’t pronounce, and I was embarrassed by that. Very embarrassed that I wasn’t the normal girl.
My father believed there were three kinds of opportunity for his four children; Kozminsky, Kozminsky (and) Kozminsky and all of us were given the same three options… I’ve been absolutely adamant that none of my children join the business.
I worked in the business from the time I could barely poke my head over the counter, I must have been an absolutely precocious monster when I look back on it, but I think that training was good because I learnt a lot about what we called in those days “the trade”, we don’t call it the trade any more because it’s a business now… We’re not all designed to be lawyers and doctors, there’s a billion other things we can be and I think that a society that allows people to use their hands constructively and in beautiful ways is a society that’s actually quite sophisticated, and I don’t see Australia as necessarily very sophisticated, yet.
I think I associate a lot with my German Grandmother, and my German Grandmother during World War II made hats to keep my father and his sister alive… I really respected that drive in a woman and I feel that women are vastly underrated in terms of capacity, strength, wisdom. The reason that it’s a mans world is that men could not afford for it to be a woman’s world, because women have so much capacity it’s scary.
I thought about Kokeshi as I was sorting them and putting them out today, and I think that at some level the Kokeshis' work for me as a response to what I would describe as not a really happy childhood. I think there’s a lot of girls in there that make up or things I feel I didn’t have as a child. I think I have had more of a childhood collecting those than I did as a child.
And when I was moving my Kokeshi before I knew every Kokeshi.. so (the) only ones that I give away are ones that aren’t embroiled with some kind of spirit.
I love collage…I don’t know what it says about me but I love collage.
Kirsten Albrecht
kozminsky.com
Facebook/KozminskyMelbourne
Instagram Kozminsky
Contributing Visual Director
Green.. the colour of life, renewal, nature, and energy, of growth, harmony,
freshness, safety, fertility, and environment.
"Green is the grass and the watermelon skin, fourth colour in the rainbow, the emeralds in a ring."
[Extract from the poem GREEN by James Hörner]
Kirsten Albrecht is the managing director of Kozminsky, a learned scholar of psychotherapy, a mother to four, a grand-mother to two.
Her life experience, her expertise in reading people is both inspiring to watch and also to partake in. The depth of her appreciation of ‘substance’ is infectious and her love for 'the colour green’ is a perfect match for her grain.
TIME WITH JOAN was fortunate to witness the beauty of the immense collection of Kokeshi on parade at Kirsten's home, some 1000 in total, this home a nest for much beauty and abundance. The idea of looking from outside-in to Kirsten paralleled with her ‘store life’ at Kozminsky. The soundtrack of The Last Emperor filled the atmosphere with serenity and riches, and above us slept a tawny frogmouth owl, oblivious to the goings on.
I don’t feel like I’m very zen inside me, I feel like I’m not a zen person, I’m glad that I look that way sometimes.
We need to be hit in the face with a piece of two b' four to learn things, we don’t learn them easily we learn them because something happens that changes us and I think that that’s how my life has been, that I’ve learnt as I’ve grown. But I think probably because I did embark on a self discovery journey quite a few years ago through psychotherapy I was able to get a fairly good understanding of who I am, including all my neuroses.
I hadn’t done a lot of things I wanted to do when I first could have done them, so I thought I really want to go back and do Psychology …the reason I did it was really because I was hit by a piece of two b’ four .. and I was off work for a year and did a lot of thinking in that time and realised that things that really matter to me were people [um], and that’s been interesting with working with jewellery because jewellery and people for me are inextricably linked and the relationship that I create with with people and jewellery are inextricably linked.. I don’t [sort of] see them as separate .. I feel like my integrity and truthfulness with my client whether it be phsyco-theroputic clients or jewellery purchases is the same, it’s congruent, so I feel like I’ve got congruence. And, I feel like sometimes in life that’s one of the hard things to have, to be congruent in life between how you’d like people to see you and what’s actually going on inside you.
I thought about Kokeshi as I was sorting them and putting them out today, and I think that at some level the Kokeshis' work for me as a response to what I would describe as not a really happy childhood. I think there’s a lot of girls in there that make up or things I feel I didn’t have as a child. I think I have had more of a childhood collecting those than I did as a child.
My father had a huge decorator in him, [so] when we were growing up we lived in Mentone which was just a little seaside town, and Dad made a ‘mini Europe' in the beachside town Mentone…. Other people were eating chops for breakfast or lunch and I was having sauerkraut and these things I couldn’t pronounce, and I was embarrassed by that. Very embarrassed that I wasn’t the normal girl.
My father believed there were three kinds of opportunity for his four children; Kozminsky, Kozminsky (and) Kozminsky and all of us were given the same three options… I’ve been absolutely adamant that none of my children join the business.
I worked in the business from the time I could barely poke my head over the counter, I must have been an absolutely precocious monster when I look back on it, but I think that training was good because I learnt a lot about what we called in those days “the trade”, we don’t call it the trade any more because it’s a business now… We’re not all designed to be lawyers and doctors, there’s a billion other things we can be and I think that a society that allows people to use their hands constructively and in beautiful ways is a society that’s actually quite sophisticated, and I don’t see Australia as necessarily very sophisticated, yet.
I think I associate a lot with my German Grandmother, and my German Grandmother during World War II made hats to keep my father and his sister alive… I really respected that drive in a woman and I feel that women are vastly underrated in terms of capacity, strength, wisdom. The reason that it’s a mans world is that men could not afford for it to be a woman’s world, because women have so much capacity it’s scary.
I thought about Kokeshi as I was sorting them and putting them out today, and I think that at some level the Kokeshis' work for me as a response to what I would describe as not a really happy childhood. I think there’s a lot of girls in there that make up or things I feel I didn’t have as a child. I think I have had more of a childhood collecting those than I did as a child.
And when I was moving my Kokeshi before I knew every Kokeshi.. so (the) only ones that I give away are ones that aren’t embroiled with some kind of spirit.
I love collage…I don’t know what it says about me but I love collage.
Kirsten Albrecht
kozminsky.com
Facebook/KozminskyMelbourne
Instagram Kozminsky
Contributing Visual Director
