The before and during. This year I shared a balcony in St Marks with Jonathan Dixon – good company and cost me in plates, stickers and tattoos. I like his work. This year I included some of my writing for the first time which felt a little scary but the feedback was good. Usually it sits at home unread. I don’t seem to have many photos, possibly because I was chatting and eating cake.
This May five of us shared Walcot Chapel in Bath, an old mortuary chapel long used for music or art, as a working open studio. We were three painters and two textile artists. My idea was to make a lot of small painted squares based on the green and white colours that are a memorable part of the setting, seen through arched windows, lit and changed by the different times of day. Somehow that gradually changed – influenced by conversation and shared space. I began to make imprints of flowers and gravestone script.
A whole set of Susi’s great grandmother’s widows weeds started talk – between ourselves and also with visitors – of widows, strong women, survival, relationships. Discussions about death and the nebulous nature of memory. A whole life often captured many years later with so few words on a gravestone.
I felt the urge to make small clay widows to live outside. Maybe not all so devoted or dutiful….
Thanks to Angie Kinnear, Michelle Dash, Ali Harper and Susi Bancroft for a week of inspiration.
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