Recent sketchbook work

I am interested in the nature of childhood and innocence and exploring this by looking at positive and evocative phrases which people are brought up on. I am using photos from my own childhood to create stitched drawings which I hope to combine with phrases and/or lines of poetry. The image in itself interests me as a form of documentation, memory and distilled emotion. I like combining words with these as I feel it builds a narrative which can be interpreted differently by different viewers depending on their own experiences of life and childhood. For me, these images excite extremely positive emotions but I don't expect all viewers to feel this way. I understand that it is very personal to my own memories.

 I hope to combine my eventual combination of images with audio tracks.

Paul Shepherd: But it moves.

“The wilderness is not a landscape you visit; it is all around you, where ever you are. We persuade ourselves that our taming of the world is profound, we lay water mains and sewers and read thousand year old books, we drive autobahns through solid rock, we huddle together in caves lit by incandescence of television screens. We do everything we can to be safe, and still the planet spins, the wind roars, the great ice caps creak and heave, the continental plates shudder and bring cities crashing to the ground, the viruses infect us and the oceans toy with us, lapping against the edges of our precarious land. We are in the midst of wilderness, even curled up with our lovers in bed.”

By Paul Shepherd from “the cultivated wilderness, or, what is a landscape?” 

This is one of my favourite quotes, you can spend hours considering all of its
profundities and the imagery is just amazing. Extremely poignant.

Swan Lanterns with Jo Foley and Fiona Smith

In September, I went to work with community freelance artists Jo Foley, Fiona Smith and Anna at Platt Fields Park. I helped to build these Swan Lanterns from Bamboo which are to be exhibited at 4 events ending at Platt Field's Centenary Firework display on the 5th of November! A local brownie group along with other groups from the Manchester area were invited to help paper the swans and a number of triangular bamboo lanterns. Hopefully the display will sail well and all of the groups involved will be out to see them in their finale on the 5th!