It is raining. It has rained and rained and rained, amid strong winds. Here, in the city, this extreme stroke of lashing weather is nothing to what it was like when I lived in Shetland. Today, the weather that has brought trains and buses to a standstill and cars are sitting in 3 ft deep water on Chesterfield road in a huge city puddle where the roads dip (why?) It is like an Autumn day in Shetland, where it was exhausting to even go to the shops and come home in the car and carry the bags to the house. So, I got wet today, so I sat in traffic but it is relatively mild storm weather and I feel safe.
At work, I dropped in to the Architecture lecture for module 1, for the first year Architect apprentices, so that they could see me, ask questions related to their apprenticeship support and for me to understand their first module. I didn’t think I would enjoy it as much as I did. It was so exciting to sit in a class situation and be inspired by the slides of the work of Architects who deliver sensory responses to social, physical and environmental spaces – to develop relationships between person and place, altering sensory experience.
My mind flew to where I would go with the project group work, if I was in their class and I realised that I missed academic stimulation to create new work. My mind rushed back to my own Fine Art degree of 1995- 98, and my MA in Knitting at NTU 2016 – 18, creating site specific work back in the abandoned croft houses in Shetland, and then it flew forward to Kyoto and how could I carry the inspiration I felt from this one hour lecture that wasn’t even for me, to create work within the environment of a city I have never seen, using found materials to make a prop to alter the sensory perception of place? that’s the brief, but in Sheffield from the city to Sky Edge.
I unintentionally started drawing a row of thin, long, unambitious, vertical lines / threads with ideas of tiny macrame baskets fastened to the lines, full of sunflower seeds, that I have gathered from my trip to Tickhill Sunflower fields in the heat of one day, seemingly so long ago. The vertical lines would be tied to a tree branch and anchored into the ground, burying a pellet of mixed sunflower seeds from Doncaster, in to a wood in Kyoto. I also thought of the confrontation and humorous work of the artist, Nina Saunders, that I saw in 1996. It feels like forever ago that Nina, upholstered sofas and chairs with great spheres couched into the seats in Chesterfield sofa style buttoning, making them into structures that could not be sat upon.
I also stripped sofas in 1996, when I was at Art school and upholstered them in dried rose petal filled muslin upholstery. The scent was sensory.
Used furniture has huge potential to tell a new story if used in sculpture or out in the environment. It is interesting how people relate to everyday furniture when is has been manipulated. In the 90’s, I found Nina’s work both beautiful and memorable. I felt part of the confusing artwork that asked me questions.
So, today, as I watched the presentation for the degree students, my own thoughts developed ideas that I could make to be manipulated into seed hills on sofa frames for the outside sensory experience for the passer by to connect with environment and place. I have collected many sunflower seed heads and am going to send some to Shetland, in the hope that they will grow in my friends’ (x2) poly crubs and bring a flash of yellow to the Shetland weather. I no longer want to rip out the upholstery of a sofa to reveal the frame to rebuild it as a sensory object, but I am thinking of taking sunflower seeds to Kyoto to make site specific work in nature and walk away, never knowing if they will grow, or be eaten by birds or squirrels, using fine cord and maybe crochet.
Did you know, that the stripey sunflowers have stripey sun flower seeds?
I haven’t felt so alive in a long time as I did in that class that wasn’t even for me. How lucky these students are to be able to experiment with environment and materials to make architectural choices at the beginning of their 3-year degree. I could drop in on Fridays, I might drop in on Fridays, but it is hard for me to keep quiet, because I am so excited by such possibility and it isn’t my degree so I need to keep away. Though, the lecture did trigger my memory of my own site specific work in Shetland which is here which I did during my MA.
After today’s presentation, the SHU library beckoned. All of the art books from the library when I did my degree in 1995 – 1998 were transferred from Psalter lane when it was demolished, to the city library – the art book collection is extensive, though some are missing. Where is Twombly’s 24 poems to the sea?
I borrowed – Van Gogh and Japan. Let’s see what happens. Maybe nothing, but for one hour, I was transformed to think completely creatively and those ideas bled into thoughts of reading, art and site specifice work. Now, I have to keep quiet on my ideas and just be an apprenticeship coach.
tracey doxey 