I’m developing a new piece of work for a day-long intervention along the River Dee in July.
I am using draped calico, bundled string, dried mud and natural charcoal to create objects in response to my interactions with the people who visit the work.
I use the process of energy exchange between the artist and the viewer as a catalyst to build the work on the day. This element of exchange is important as it contrasts with my work as an art therapist, where I do not disclose information about myself or my ideas, in order to be available to the client and their story. However, in my art practice, I am free to share my thoughts and ideas as a process to build the work.
In a previous collaborative piece with Jen Wynne titled ‘Mucky Daughters’, we collected mud from the banks of the Dee Estuary and explored a re-wilding of motherhood through sculpture and drawing with mud. I see this new work as a continuation of Mucky Daughters, in a bio/geographical sense: I am working at a different stretch of the river, one that is public and sanitised, rather than the messy and wild space of the earlier work; and I am in a new phase in my relationship with art materials, where I enjoy more freedom and wildness in my expression than in earlier work. This new piece exists in this space of transition.
