I’ve been thinking a lot, over the last year, about where and how my work should be encountered. Both how I allow it to ‘speak’ and who I hope it might speak to. The Arts in Hospital Scheme aims to use art to create and enhance a healing environment, so I was absolutely thrilled to be invited to display my ‘Wounds Series’ with them. The series explores both physical and emotional healing and I feel truly honoured to have these pieces on display outside the hospital’s chemotherapy ward.
‘The wound is the place where the Light enters you’, Rūmī, 13th-century Persian Poet.
Healing from trauma, whether emotional or physical, is a transformational journey. In my case it was the journey of a breast cancer diagnosis, an immediate mastectomy and the slow recovery from reconstructive surgery. But this was just the beginning.
When potters talk about pots we use anthropomorphic language. A pot has a foot, belly, neck, shoulder and lip. These very ‘human’ references describe something of the way we relate to pots. They reveal an ancient relationship between mankind and vessels, a notion of ‘pot’ that vibrates through every culture from the moment we first learned to shape mud with our hands. My pots are autobiographical. A constant making and remaking of myself. A particular expression of my humanness that I find impossible to communicate by other means. So, after mending physically from my surgery, it was through these pots that my emotional healing began.
Mother
In Kintsugi, the intricate and painstaking Japanese Art of repairing pots with gold, the mended pot is considered more beautiful and precious than the original piece. It has a unique narrative of renewed life. In my ‘wound series’ I have used rich and beautiful materials that express my own emotional wounds in this positive light…. by bleeding emerald glass or bronze glaze. But a needle both pierces and mends, so the slim Victorian knitting pins, and fine copper thread, speak about the intricate and painstaking craftsmanship of surgical repair and also of emotional repair
On Beauty and Brokenness, A Trilogy
To see the work or find out more about the scheme please visit https://dchartsinhospital.org.uk until June 30th 2021