A brief opportunity to write on the connectedness of artist and art object.

The act of making is a process of learning, knowing and bonding with material, action and time. Time spent on the creation of new work forms a contemplative emotional response to the final outcome/s. Each piece created in the studio becomes an attachment, an obsession, and finally an extension of the self. With each piece of work I send out into the world, so goes a little piece of myself.

Encountering works in their new locations or homes – however rare an occurance – is like meeting an old friend, memory soft-focused but intact, engaged, attached.

This summer I set out to make a commissioned piece for Jan Hogarth’s Quest project. The work involved some exciting new challenges (ceramic shells can be done use The Stove’s pedal powered foundry, although smokeless coal is the preferable fuel), and new discoveries. After the event, the work which consisted of a set of pewter cast drinking vessels and vintage glass torpedo bottles were dispersed with the winds, finding new homes and new owners after the projects conclusion.

In this way, each carrier becomes the storyteller, and are key to the history and narrative of the work. In taking a piece onwards, so they carry a little responsibility to share the stories, experiences made real through secondhand experiences, and a little part of me as maker, embedded in the heart of each piece, shaped as they are by my own sense of meaning, knowing and questioning.

I’m hoping not that the works will be returned but that each recipient will carry the work with them, to be re-interpretted in the stories of the future where we can meet again. These are the gifts of the artist, sent out in trust, in hope of creating new narratives.

Thank you Jan for the opportunity to create something new and beautiful for Quest. More about Jan and her work available on her website here And special thanks to all those who tasted, shared and exchanged Hart Fell from these pieces. Keep them safe and tell their stories x