My first and most immediate association with Regina Giménez’s work—our prompt for The Kick-About No.157—was childhood memories of those colour-changing, ‘ever-lasting’ gobstopper sweets—sometimes branded as ‘Jawbreakers’ on account of their size.
The first image below is one website’s photograph of their range of giant gobstoppers, a packet of which I purchased on impulse. A few days later, and I’d set up a workbench out in the garden and clamped the first of the Jawbreakers in place, so I could cut it in half with an angle-grinder…
I was expecting to be disappointed to discover that the colour-changing properties of the gobstopper had been exaggerated – but no! Once the clouds of sugar settled, I saw this wonderful cross-section of colourful concentric circles. I sanded the two halves to achieve a lovely smooth surface and then spray-lacquered them (much to my husband’s disappointment, who’d been eyeing the gobstoppers with obvious appetite). I did the same with the two remaining Jawbreakers. They are lovely things, highly tactile and they are sitting on my shelf.
Red's Kingdom 
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