I am over the moon to be one of 6 other Norfolk-based artists and creative practitioners who have been awarded funding and support from Norfolk & Norwich Festival’s Creative Individuals Norfolk fund.
My project, Yarmouth Springs Eternal, will explore the natural world, reflecting upon isolation and anxiety experienced during COVID-19. Participants will listen, look, smell, touch and taste to share the experience of seeking out hope and watching spring unfold. It will engage communities in Great Yarmouth, including adults who have experienced homelessness and migration.
The project will take place in Spring 2021 and has been supported by originalprojects; through help forming the programme and access to a central Great Yarmouth venue to base the project at
The project is still in development, but I plan to connect with groups in Fenland and West Suffolk remotely through a guided sensory art-making walk in a location of their choice.
I’ve been trialling ideas in my local area – collecting photos, drawings, rubbings, words and sound captured in the landscape Find out more about Creative Conversations in Isolation on the Market Place CPP website.
Lockdown continues in the UK and whilst the guidelines were changing around spending time outdoors, I was also pondering my response to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts‘ Artists Programme brief.
Organised by Learning Programme Manager (Adults & Young People), Nell Croose Myhill, the spring Artists Programme was themed around ‘Situations’, inspired by Lucy R Lippard’s magazine-exhibition for the July/August edition of Studio International in 1970. Each artist in the programme would give and receive a situation – I was prompted with ‘Reimagined Playscapes’ from Francesca Cant and passed on ‘the place I go when I’m making’ to Hannelore Smith.
For my ‘Reimagined Playscapes’ prompt, I was thinking about the lockdown situation, playfulness, empty streets and resource-limited responses – the result was a game of hopscotch!
As well as responding to this brief, I’ve been continuing to work outdoors and use natural and found materials. Whilst working up a new series of remote resources, I starting playing with nature brushes and painted a series of blank ink nests using sticks and grasses. I also found some long cut grass that I’d added to the wild corner of my garden the month before and had since dried, so I started to form this and fresh grass into nest-like shapes.
Whilst making these I was thinking about the idea of a nest as a place of home, but when painted in black, it felt less comforting and maybe more trapping. I enjoyed replicated the form in different materials and look forward to continuing this train of thought…
Thank you Becky from Supporting Your Art for inviting me to be interviewed about my work during lockdown. In the interview, I talk about some of the challenges I’ve encountered with working remotely and how I’ve worked around them.
Also on Becky’s blog, you can read a recent interview from ArtatWork CIC about how they’ve adapted their regular arts groups during this period.
A few weeks ago in April 2020, I was interviewed via Zoom during the COVID-19 lockdown by Gemma from Publib – an online public library and resource for socially engaged arts practitioners.
As the COVID-19 lockdown continues and travel is limited, I’ve been seeking inspiration from my home and garden for art-making this month.
I’ve been lucky to be commissioned by Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Suffolk Artlink, Making Waves Together/Norfolk County Council and Norwich University of the Arts to produce various remote learning resources. The creative resources have been a range of videos and written pieces with photos, which aim to support people to find inspiration and creativity during lockdown at home. This has kept my own creativity flowing through these difficult times.
Alongside trusty cyanotype, I’ve been experimenting with anthotype photography. This technique is completely chemical-free and plant-based, and uses the liquid from plants, leaves, berries, vegetables, etc as a light sensitive coating for paper to expose in the sun. I’m really enjoying playing with this new-to-me medium that I’ve been longing to try for ages, and can’t wait to try new plants in the bright spring sunshine.
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