Surrealism
Exploring automatic writing
Crucible is honoured to introduce: The practice of automatic writing is a way of entering into the dream space. It provokes connections between seemingly disparate things. Writing this way mines the subconscious, what lies beneath, what surfaces when the editing brain– the intellect/judgement, is held at bay. Over Zoom, across many time zones and the Atlantic Ocean, Banita, Satur and Maya created the automatic writing in this piece. It is collaborative, non-narrative and unedited.
Maya Kini
Maya Kini is a poet and goldsmith based in San Francisco, California. Her writing explores the intersections of craft, language, and the body—examining how making and materiality shape perception, memory, and repair. As a goldsmith, Maya reflects on material transformation, endurance, and loss, as well as the many ways gold has shaped history and carried stories across time. Part artist, part historian, her practice seeks to understand how materials perform both physically and poetically. She brings a love of research, a minimalist sensibility, and a sculptural approach to making. Her work emerges from the belief that no material is static, and that there is beauty to be found in the changing surfaces of objects as they are worn.
Maya was born in 1977 in Boston. She studied Spanish literature and sculpture before going on to receive a graduate degree in Metalsmithing in 2007 from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her jewelry and sculptural work have been exhibited nationally and internationally and featured in numerous publications. Maya has taught at Penland School of Craft, CSU Sacramento, and Sacramento City College. She is a 2025–26 Brown Handler Resident with the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Maya works out of a studio cooperative on the historic Sausalito waterfront.
Satur Chong
Born Malaysian and ethnically Chinese(2001), I was mainly grew up in Melaka, a small, historic and multicultural town in Malaysia, also spending some of my early years in Shanghai, China. From 2019-2022 I was partially trained as a jeweller at Sheffield Hallam University, flushed and thrown into the experience of entering a niche game of reevaluating objects and redefining the conceptual boundaries of jewellery. When I look back, what I took from the contemporary jewellery world is its mocking self-reflection. So this is the way I create, or better saying a stray, as a constant reflection of the sensible contemporaneity with a pinch of humour. During the masters degree, my interest and practice touches the realm of public art and have been involving in events such as the KCAW public art trail. Recent work includes sculpture, performance, photography and other interdisciplinary art forms---but I admire capers to secretly considering that they can still be a piece of jewellery.
Banita Mistry
Banita Mistry is a painter and sculptor. Her practice uses materials and techniques, often associated with adornment, to explore individual and shared experiences of virtual technologies.
Exploring henna through a painterly lens, Banita works intuitively with the material, subverting the traditional expectations of ornamental design and adornment. Her current process emulates her experiences of the ‘infinite scroll’ algorithm, looking at the physical and psychological effects of such an immersive and repetitive action. She views the work as an exercise in focus, endurance and the act of letting go, considering the possibilities for spiritual experiences in repetitive acts.
Banita graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2023. Recent projects and collaborations included an augmented reality project with Snap Inc. (2023), and iAtelier with the Crafts Council (2022). Recent exhibitions include the Sarabande Group show (2024) as exhibitor and curator, SEAMS at Season Gallery, Brick Lane (2023) as exhibitor and curator, and Arrival of the Train, Cromwell Place (2023).
