Heathcliff...

"I am Heathcliff! He's always, always on my mind..."

-Emily Bronte "Wuthering Heights."

A copy of Wuthering Heights, weathered in the garden for a year and a half. I'm so happy I left this out all that time ago, it now fits seamlessly in to my "Oracle" project. As it dries it starts to look more like a book again, the pages curl up, the print becomes visible and the soil crumbles away. I'm not sure what to do with it now, perhaps theres a place for it in the museum piece.

I love Wuthering Heights, although I haven't read it in years, but that type of love, that narrative isn't what I want to do with this project. They say you have to be young to fall in love with Wuthering Heights, to want that kind of destructive relationship. I think I'm well past that, give me a Darcy rather than a Heathcliff any day...

Today I love tea and breakfast for lunch, my long lost claddagh ring and long lost friends. I love Autumn and filtered golden light and as always I hate regrets. The woman I want to be has long dark hair, she smells like oranges and dark chocolate and that hurt in her soul doesn't keep her up all night. Give me time...

Faded

Slowly, very slowly that light made its way through the rooms until all that once meant something started to fade away...

Lilydale, scanned photo treated with sandpaper. Something ghostly, something fragile? A faded memory or lost family story. I'd like to explore this further, I like the effect but as with the rest it needs more development.

Today winter has gone again, and Autumn has returned, I've had a lovely long golden morning, full of peat smoke, crisp leaves, books and coffee, light grey rain and knitted scarfs. ooooh Halloween!!!

And there she stood, by the mosses, her hair turning green in that deep summer rain...

This is the moss locket and narrative from earlier in the term, I wanted some sense of decay or neglect to it. An abandoned or lost object, or something beautiful with a secret. That secret hidden a year too long...

It needs more development, I've planted moss in one of my fragile white tea cups, the green just creeping onto the saucer, that change in the leaves perhaps? Delicate tea spoons tied with white lace, some feeling of normal among the strange.

I've also left one of those tea cups outside, we'll see what the winter does to it, a change, destruction, decay beyond my control...


This is another experimental set up, the same narrative as above, on the plinth and moss planted in the glass urn. Again it needs development but I want to move on from just images, I need something more tactile... To create an interplay between the image, text and object.

I wish I had buried something in the soil, so it was just visible against the glass, the locket or a piece of bone perhaps. I'll create that "bone jar" within the next few days, perhaps in something more domestic, a jam jar maybe.

I want to create something beautiful but a little unsettling with this narrative. It is turning more than a little dark, but at the moment I'm ok with that.

I'd like to experiment with one of the glass cases we have in college, create a museum set up with this work, I'll just see where it takes me...

Snow White

"snow! Wonderful Snow! Don't you wish you could roll about in it like dogs?!" -Jo March, Little Women.

Its snowing! Yesterday morning I woke up and my world was painted white. Its surreal it melts to reveal orange and gold autumn leaves. I've always loved snow, its like a pause, like catching your breath or a blank page in a new notebook, and then its gone... close your eyes, breath deep and life moves on.

This is part of an inspiration line for the Twelve Wild Geese project, Aran knits and woven bog cotton. In college I am currently printing the Fairy Tale, My fairy Tale, onto the wall, letter by letter, with tiny stamps and ink. Its taking a long time but I love it, I'm surrounded by words and ink, getting lost...

Today I love toast and jam, knitted jumpers and Autumn snow. Today the woman I am has ink on her fingers, stars by her veins and frost in her hair. Her house smells like ice and peat smoke and it feels strangely like home.

Lace and Light

Fragile days,
Light on the sills like torn lace,
Pale bone china, wearing thin,
And time flitting through the windows,
Dark green and deep...

I really do love how the Polaroid ages each image, and softens the world into a vague beauty.

I'm working on The Oracle narrative, I feel as if it has become stagnant, I don't know where I'm taking it... I have ideas I want to work with, tangible objects, but as for the narrative, it hasn't moved on...

Apples and Polaroids...

Ohhhhhh, I LOVE my Polaroid camera! I've been playing around with it for a while, and I adore it. I love how it sees light, golden and dreamy...

I bought an old sx-70 from eBay at the end of the summer, and filters from save Polaroid so i can use 600 film. And so I'm very conscious of using the film, it almost feels precious; stored in my fridge, between the coffee and jams, and developed under my jumpers next to my skin. I love the involvement with it, not the detachment there seems with digital...

Autumn is here, today crisp and golden, I've been filling my days with stacks of books, apples and coffee.