High Gloss Trash was born in a bad place - my mum was in hospital and I was spending days and nights there with her and as a result was unable to work on any of my design or illustration works. To keep some semblance of sanity and self I turned to digital art and was surprised at how colourful everything was in contrast to how I felt, it was almost as if the blacker the mood the brighter the art!

At first I thought about using the colourful designs as logos, maybe stickers but what I really wanted was to see them in 3D and so, to further challenge myself I turned to acrylic - thinking I might just make a few of the pieces into trinkets for myself. Well, as soon as I started showing them to friends they took off! Requests for necklaces, hair ties and finally brooches abound. I had to come up with a name.

Unable to take where I found myself seriously (or ever take myself seriously) I described the pieces to a friend as “I’m making shiny things, trashy things - behold my shiny trash!” and it just stuck.

Everything about these pieces is at odds with my usual dark and sleek design aesthetic and yet I love it, it’s just so….trashy! So kitsch! And lets me relive the awesome aesthetics of 80’s stickers that I was too afraid to commit to sticking to any surface and combine it with tones and textures I never get to work with. And in some strange way, is the perfect representation of that feeling that everything is crap but you’re pushing through because you have to - you’re trashy and a you know it and you’re going to make it work!

By the way, if you’d like to see that other work for contrast: Claudia Savage