Another insight, despite the strangeness of this latest form.
On my morning walk along the shore, I sometimes notice the seaweed underfoot. This particular piece of kelp is old, gathered years ago on Arran, perhaps, or here on the mainland. I have collections of dried, twisted and curled seaweed, leaves, shells and stones, accumulated over decades and carried with me through successive studio lives. They hold memories of where I have been, both literally and in my work.
I have often wondered about incorporating these small treasures into my work, but have rarely done so.
Recently, I tried stitching a small silk/metal form into a piece of seaweed, using a medium to soften and strengthen it. Too many coats left the seaweed shiny, almost plastic. The result seemed ugly and rather sad, and initially I regarded it as a failure.
But when I suspended it beside several other recent forms, something unexpected happened. Together, they seemed to belong. Each was strange and individual, yet there was a sense of connection between them, a quiet conversation. They seemed to speak of traces of absence.
The awkward seaweed form was among friends.
I began to move the other forms around, grouping them less according to when they had been made and more according to what seemed to pass between them. Seen together, they acquired a different presence. They were no longer simply individual objects, but a kind of collective, solitary yet connected.
I have been noticing other collections in the studio too: small natural objects, materials, sketchbooks and boxes of earlier work. Each holds traces of another time. The older silk/metal forms, stored away for years, remain present in the new work I am making now. Perhaps these latest forms are their descendants, carrying something of the past while moving into unfamiliar territory.
Since opening the boxes, my way of working has changed. I am less inclined to follow the iterative, ritualistic process that sustained me for so long. I still want to make small forms, but I am increasingly interested in their complexity, their awkwardness and their relationships with one another. I am also beginning to bring together fragments of different times, allowing the past and present to meet within a single object.
This way of working takes time. There are frustrations and failures, pauses and unexpected discoveries. Sometimes a form seems to have little to offer until I see it differently, or place it somewhere else.
I am still finding my way. But opening the boxes has made it possible for me to see the work, and my relationship with it, differently. What initially felt deeply unsettling has gradually become more compelling. I no longer feel the same need to accumulate or to repeat. There is room now for uncertainty, for the unexpected, and for connections I could not have planned.
The studio is small and space is running out. But not, as I had begun to think, ideas or possibilities.
For now, I will keep making, looking, moving things around and seeing what emerges.