PARALLEL LINES - Maggs Beneath the Covers 4

Fantastic news! Today's Friday 13th of July and I've just received a Tweet from English-pen letting me know that Professor Busra Ersanli has reportedly been released from custody.   She, along with over 180 other writers, publishers, journalists, students and human rights activists, was arrested in Turkey last October and has been held in a women's prison, awaiting trial, ever since. 

I came across her name after doing an internet search for women writers in prison soon after hearing, on Friday 13th of April, that my proposal for 'Maggs Beneath the Covers' had been accepted.  The more I read of her case on the websites of Pen International and English-pen the more I was struck by the uncanny parallels with Francesco Ghesi the owner of the book that had inspired my proposal.

Like Francesco Ghesi, Busra Ersanli is a published writer and a university professor - of political science.  Like him she'd been held in prison awaiting trial and like him had spent her time writing her own defence against the spurious charges levelled against her.

There was another reason though, why I finally chose to focus on her story to represent contemporary imprisoned writers.  After contacting English-pen to let them know of my project and then again to ask for advice on contacting writers in prison, Cat Lucas of their Writers at Risk programme emailed me a digital image of a postcard that Busra had sent to Sarah, an English-pen member.  In celebration of World Book Night, Sarah had responded to English-pen's call to send a book to an imprisoned writer.  Sending a book is an uncontroversial way of making contact and letting a prisoner know that they are not forgotten.  The book Sarah chose was 'I Capture the Castle' by Dodie Smith - one of my own all time favourite reads. 

      My own much loved copy of 'I Capture the Castle'.  It's been a comfort blanket in difficult times and never fails to make me smile.

It's a captivating and gently humorous portrait of a young girl trying to find her voice as a writer above the clamour and chaos of her eccentric, impoverished, artistic family.  The opening lines find her sitting in the kitchen sink to write her journal.

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink, that is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining board which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea cosy. I can't say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left.  And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be very inspiring ..."   How very true! A charming reminder that we all need to move outside our comfort zone from time to time.

This common tie of having read and enjoyed the same book I felt gave me an introduction to writing to Professor Ersanli - a shared experience, however small, helped bridge our different worlds.  Though, actually, not so very different.  In some of the reports of her arrest and trial she was described as a "Professor of Sociology", and I too had taught university courses in sociology some years previously. 

I found it ironic, but strangely levelling that now, in these days of instant digital communication, we were forced to rely on the exchange of handwritten letters and postcards which might perhaps take weeks to arrive - if at all.  Though books and messages of solidarity were getting through in this instance, Cat Lucas warned me that sometimes prisoners of conscience have been presented with sacks of mail only on their release - denied the solace during captivity of knowing there were those who cared.  In some cases, imprisoned writers have gone to extra-ordinary lengths to communicate with family or friends: writing in infinitesimally small script on minute scraps of paper or fabric, begging or bribing guards - who are often more sympathetic than one might think - to smuggle messages, or seeking help from other prisoners to get the word out. 

Francesco Ghesi's story, written over four hundred years ago between the lines of his little book, on every page, sometimes only two or three lines per page, wherever he could find the space to communicate his innocence and pleas for justice, still, unfortunately, finds parallels today.

I've always felt that basketry as with any mode of creativity is about making connections between different lines of thought and material practices across social, historical, political, cultural and temporal spaces. Yet it still remained for me to find a way of weaving all these parallel storylines together ..........

HARD LINES - Maggs Beneath the Covers 3

"Hard lines chuck", my partner the ceramist consoled when I told him the book I'd chosen as my inspiration for the project 'Maggs Beneath the Covers' had been sold to a university library in the United States.  After the initial stab of disappointment at not being able to see or hold the book for myself  I quickly realised there was a  curious symmetry to what I now regarded as my 'lost object' of desire - in Lacanian terms that which drives the urge to create.

The material realisation of a piece of work comes in many forms and I've never been especially interested in literal depiction, recreation or illustration.  Now that the actual book was gone I could fully turn my attention to its owner - the mysterious man in the Roman prison - who I would also never see except in my mind's eye and the signficance of his own interventions into the text.

Paul Quarrie at work in the Continental and Illuminations Department

Paul Quarrie, who had researched the book prior to its sale, soon provided me with fascinating background information, including its title and dimensions.   As one of the many editions of the canons of the Council of Trent, written in Latin and printed in Venice in 1564 by one G. Cavalcalupo, the small book was neither rare nor remarkable.  Ironically, as Paul had explained on the site visit, books such as this, written in Latin, are now quite hard to sell as so few people read the language these days.  With its plain vellum cover it wasn't even desirable as a decorative addition to a gentleman's study or country house library, unlike the many lavishly tooled and gilded Continental books of a similar period on display in the department.

                           

                    Early gold-tooled vellum and leather bound books from continental Europe

Ordinarily it wouldn't have had much going for it and might have languished in Maggs back catalogues for decades.  Certainly, I'd blinked and almost missed it. What made it special was its extra-ordinary provenance.  Its owner Francesco Ghesi had been a professor of philosophy and theology who'd taught first in Naples and then in Rome.  He was himself a published writer of several manuscripts and printed books.  Somehow though - possibly through connections to Giovanni Morone, one of the more heterodox thinkers of the time - he'd fallen foul of Pius V who was elected Pope in 1566. 

Upon opening the book it had been revealed that Ghesi had turned it upside down and back to front and, throughout its 184 pages, between the lines of printed text, he had handwritten his defence to the Roman Inquisition whilst imprisoned by the Pope under suspicion of heresy.  It was probably precisely the fact that this was such an unremarkable volume of religious doctrine, so small as to fit easily within a man's grasp, that he'd been able to carry it with him to prison.  And, anyway, how could the Inquisition object to a prisoner reading and reflecting upon the very canons of faith against which he'd allegedly committed heresy.  He finished writing his defence, with its poignant plea for justice, in December 1570 but  was only freed in 1574, following the death of Pius V, after spending eight years in prison.  Francesco Ghesi died in 1578 "unable to enjoy other than in paradise the prize of his innocence".

Hard lines indeed!

I now knew which material I wanted to use to make the piece.  But first I had another difficult choice to make;  one contemporary writer, a prisoner of conscience, to represent the hundreds, if not thousands, imprisoned worldwide today .........

OUTLINE - Maggs Beneath the Covers 2

                     
As one of over forty artists invited to submit an outline proposal for a new Arts Council England site responsive project, 'Maggs beneath the Covers', I was faced with a challenge. Choosing one book from amongst the vast collections of Maggs Bros Antiquarian booksellers (www.maggs.com) seemed daunting at first.  A bit like searching for the one perfectly round pebble on a shingle beach or an uncracked cup in a sea of shards - except that here everything was potentially perfect in its own way if only one could see it in the first place.  How would the mind's eye adjust to, and begin to make sense of the sheer volume of volumes at Maggs? the overwhelming tsunami waves of personal, social, historical, cultural and political matter?  How to begin the cognitive/creative process of sifting, categorising, selecting?  Perhaps, I hoped, the one book would just eventually leap into view, standing out from all the others and calling out to me, "Stella, I choose you!"

                   Early manuscript inscribed on vellum with illuminated capitals and rubrication


Taking on the mantle of a cultural anthropologist I tried to listen and carefully observe, making notes and taking photographs as we were given a tour of the various departments, which included Early British, Travel, Continental and Illuminations, Autographs and Manuscripts and Counterculture. We all smiled as one of the directors cut through any fine-grained classification systems and subsumed all this stuff under the three broad-brush categories of  'white books, brown books and shiny books'.  'White books', which could also be manuscripts, are the earliest - often written on, or bound in, vellum and dating back centuries. 

'Brown books' are so-called because they are often bound in leather - albeit not always brown in colour and 'shiny books' is the catch-all, dealers term refering to anything from more recent times which might nowadays even include computer hard-drives or e-books. 

I have to admit that my magpie eye finds it hard to resist anything shiny - even the foil covered Easter bunny on the mantlepiece in the Autographs and Manuscripts department seemed to be winking at me in a mischevious way - 'why not choose me?'.  Or perhaps it was because I'd skipped breakfast and was begining to feel a bit light headed from all the information overload that the promise of a quick sugar-rush seemed so appealing.

There was much food for thought:  the whole of Captain Cook's journals from his voyages of discovery - a sensation in their time like a trip to Mars.  Stacks and stacks of political pamphlets - the eighteenth century equivalent of blogging - a whole society ranting to itself.  Two leaves from Marco Polo's journal found under a fly-leaf having been re-cycled as bookbinder's waste.  A series of exquisitely illuminated capitals cut from their manuscripts and flogged to a Grand Tourist who then collaged them into a scrapbook like holy iconography from last year's Christmas cards.  

   Another job for the book doctor - re-uniting these Capitals with the

    body of the text from which they were cut.

Yet when I got home and tried to make sense of my pages of notes, images and sketches I found myself drawn again and again to one scribbled sentence.  "Little book (favourite) been in a Roman prison"  It was a short reminder of a small, insignificant-looking, vellum bound book which Paul Quarrie, from the Continental and Illuminations department had cupped gently in the palm of his hand as he'd explained to us that its owner had handwritten 'between the lines' of printed text whilst incarcerated in a Roman prison.  Who was the owner? why was he imprisoned? what had he written? what had become of him?  There were no answers to these questions in my notes and I hadn't taken a photograph of the book.  Distracted by hunger and chocolate rabbits I'd almost missed the pure gold of the extraordinary human story hidden beneath the covers of the small, pale book.

                                  JEWEL TRAP 2010 Stella Harding.  Photo: Sylvain Deleu


We were given only a few days to write and submit a proposal.  Despite knowing hardly anything about the book, not even its title, the plight of its imprisoned owner desperate to find some space to communicate his thoughts stirred in me a desire to make something of its story.  It seemd fitting to propose making a basketry form which would reference the darker side of containment - to trap and constrain, cage and kill.  I had touched on this theme before in other site responsive projects at Pitzhanger Manor and the Petrie Museum (see previous posts).  This time I wanted to use it to highlight the cause of the many hundreds, possibly thousands of writers, jounalists, poets and bloggers who today are imprisoned, tortured, sometimes killed for speaking out against repression.

I was thrilled and excited when I got a call from curator Penny Green to say that my proposal had been accepted and I could hardly wait to get started. First thing was to contact English-pen - the local branch of a worldwide organisation, Pen International, which campaigns for the freedom to write and to read. www.englishpen.org . Cat Lucas co-ordinates their Writers at Risk programme  and could help identify and put me in touch with writers currently in prison.

Next thing was to email staff in the Continental and Illuminations department at Maggs to arrange another visit to find out as much as possible about the little book.  I wanted to hold it, turn its pages, see for myself the hand-writing betwen the lines, learn more about its owner, make drawings and photograph it. Penny Green's vision as curator was that our finished works would be displayed as close as possible to where the chosen book was kept.  Visitors to the exhibition would be free to explore the public areas of Maggs and discover both the artworks and the books that had inspired them.

When I got an email inviting me for a second visit it also contained some disappointing news.  What each of the chosen artists had been warned could  happen, had  happened.  Maggs Bros, who have been in business since 1853,  had done what one of the world's leading antiquarian booksellers does best. 

They had SOLD my book! ...........

BETWEEN THE LINES - Maggs Beneath the Covers 1

Not just any old book bag; this is a Maggs Bros Antiquarian Booksellers of Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London, old book bag.

I'm going to be devoting the next few posts to charting the research and making process for a new site responsive project.  MAGGS BENEATH THE COVERS. Curated by artist Penny Green and co-funded by Arts Council England and Maggs Brothers Antiquarian Booksellers of Mayfair, London - one of the world's leading antiquarian booksellers -  the project features work commissioned from 12 artist/makers each exploring the interface between craft and fine art practice.  Our brief was to create work which responds in 'alternative and conceptual ways' to a particular book or manuscript in Maggs unique collections.  In other respects it was a fairly open brief in that we could take any aspect of a book as our inspiration: its author, owner, title, content, cover design, material composition, even the size, look and feel of it or its situation within the building. 

As I climbed the steep and narrow back stairs of the rambling eighteenth century town house on the first site visit I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Quite a lot of rare and beautiful old books, probably neatly arranged on bookshelves, was a pretty safe bet I thought having come through the elegant, book-lined, Georgian entrance hall and adjacent drawing room that serves as Maggs reception area. 

Wrong! Squillions of old books, in apparent disarray, absolutely everywhere, some piled high on vertiginous shelving, some on desks threatening to overwhelm modern day communications technology, some resting awhile on chairs, some stacked on the floor, others in cardboard boxes in passage ways, yet more in fireplaces and thousands in the 'book hospital' patiently awaiting, like the walking wounded in a MASH-style field hospital, a new spine, stitches to a loose leaf or a life-saving injection of TLC.  Judging by their age and condition and the fact that we couldn't even get through the door of the 'hospital' they'd been waiting a very long time.  I'd rather take my chances with Lewisham A&E any day!

                                

                                                        And I had to choose just one.............

POWER LINES

I'm showing work with Basketry Plus in a new exhibition, 13 AMULETS, at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London.   www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/petrie . 

The theme of amulets and power objects is a line of enquiry I've been exploring in different ways for some time.  I made my first amulet for FULL CIRCLE, a group exhibition with Hertfordshire Basketry, in 2009.  It was a small circular form made using a five-rod spiral plait closed with a Japanese knot - the first of many.  I've always found this plait spell-binding - the rhythm and repetition of the weave enthrals the conscious mind while the twists and complexities of the emerging spiral bewitch and bewilder the subconscious.

AMULET #1 2009

An amulet is a protective charm which was often worn as piece of jewellery or kept close to the body - either held in the hand, placed in a pocket or in the folds of clothing.  My amulet was designed to be worn as a sculptural wrist piece. 

I made two related works for the same show.  One was a Hex-weave container, the other a large painted wall piece titled INCANTATION.  Willow rods, spray-painted through a letter stencil, created vertical lines of  indecipherable text.  Old dialect words are magical - their derivations obscure and their connotations enchanting. When I was little and would sometimes get a tiny splinter of wood in my finger my grandmother called it a 'spell' and she cast it out with tender care.  By a curious inversion my own spellings often result in splintered words!

INCANTATION 2009

I returned to the theme of Amulets in 2011 when I took part in the Hothouse exhibition 'Portraits in the Making' at Pitzhanger Manor Gallery and House.  In addition to NOVA, my large-scale work for the Gallery (see previous post), I proposed making a Cabinet of Curiosities for the House itself.  Amongst my collection of 'curious mathematical gems' were several amulets.

Amulets were believed to offer protection against a whole range of ills, evils, maladies and malevolent spirits.  One type, a stone with a naturally occurring hole through it, would be placed under the pillow to ward off disturbing nightmares in which the sleeper dreams they are being pinned down by a demon or witch.  The old-English word for witch is hag - hence the term hag-ridden - and the amuletic stone is thus known as a hag stone.  I once, thankfully only once, experienced such a nightmare - which is now thought to be caused by a fairly common neurological condition referred to as sleep paralysis.  The fact that there's an old-English term to denote it suggests that many others have suffered over the centuries and sought solace in a protective charm when all else failed.

I made a whole set of spiral plait hag stones, some of which were dipped in porcelain slip, fired, and thereby literally turned to stone.

Porcelain GHOST STONE

Other amulets contained porcelain letters made for me by ceramicist Rosanna Martin.  I chose porcelain for all these pieces because Chinese porcelain - once a rarity considered more precious than gold, was often housed in Cabinets of Curiosity. 

I enjoyed a bit of word play before enclosing the letters in the plaited structures and loved the way the lower case letters in particular could be laid end to end to create meandering lines reminiscent of ancient runes.  It was like being a kid again making up secret messages.  I later discovered that talismans, or written charms, derive potency from being indecipherable to the uninitiated - a curious connection with my stencilled willow Incantation. 

                                             CORAL AMULETS containing porcelain talismans 2011

I wanted to develop the idea of making a talisman using porcelain letters as my amulet for the Petrie Exhibition.  Many Egyptian amulets in the Petrie collection were made of faience (glazed pottery) beads.  There are numerous other examples made from more precious materials such as gold, red coral and carnelian.  My talisman ONE FOR SORROW was to be a spell to ward off magpies - the human kind who would steal away our most precious jewels to feather their own nests.  Silence is golden but not if your creative voice is stifled or distorted through raucous mimicry. 

Once again I asked Rosanna Martin to make the letters and this time the porcelain was decorated with red on-glaze enamel and gold lustre.

I later discovered that talismans often took the form of acrostics - just as well because one of the four Os broke when it came out of the kiln! A happy accident which forced me to be inventive and thereby make an unplanned connection with ancient tradition.  The use of inscription as a means to ward off evil is thougth to have stemmed from the belief, in early times, of the holiness and power of words.  The title of my amulet comes from the rhyme I was taught to repeat as a child whenever I saw one or more magpies.
                       

                            One for sorrow, two for joy,

                            three for a letter, four for a boy,

                            five for silver, six for gold,

                            seven for a secret never to be told.

There are many regional variants of this rhyme which makes reference to superstitions regarding the magpie's power as a totem animal endowed with the gift of prophesy.  In our family the more usual 'three for a girl' was changed to 'three for a letter'. 

Visitors to the Petrie exhibition might well ask, 'where are the baskets?' or wonder where the connection lies between basketry and amulets.  As contemporary basket makers, several members of Basketry Plus, myself included, have moved away from making functional containers and prefer instead to experiment with basketry construction techniques as a medium for creative expression.  The weave is what connects us as a group and the power of the weave is our connection to the protective power of amulets.  As Maggie Smith, one of our group members, discovered when researching her amulet - it's basketry techniques themselves, especially those that involve the twisting and knotting of fibres, that were believed to trap evil spirits through perplexity.

The basketry element of ONE FOR SORROW - Amulet #9 of the 13 AMULETS is open hexagonal plaiting, otherwise known as hex-weave.  It both protects and obscures the talisman beneath.  I've given away only the title - there are more spellings and I defy anyone to crack the code. 

The exhibition continues until May 31st 2012. 

Here's a taster of some of the other amulets for anyone who can't make it.

Amulet #10 KEEP SAFE MY LOVE by Suni Lopez

STRANDLINE Amulet by Maggie Smith including a bag of sand to protect against witches - a witch must pause to count the grains of sand before she can enchant the weaver. (note the hagstone!)

Detail of SAFE DELIVERY - a childbirth amulet by Joyce Hicks, including a looped bag in the form of the Egyptian hieroglyph for basket.

DIVINITY - an amulet by Joan West. The form is based on the Eye of Horus - a powerful charm against the evil eye.

SEE THROUGH BLUE amulet by Norma Adams - a multilayered form containing turquoise found objects, inspired by the linen wrappings on Egyptian mummies.

Detail of UNEARTHED by Elaine Kingsford using fragments of clay pipes found on her allotment - a place of healing calm.

There will be an artists talk and demonstration at the Petrie Museum on May 10th from 6.30-7.30pm  ALL WELCOME

 

Many thanks to Debbie Challis at the Petrie Museum for all her efforts in helping put on this exhibition and for hosting the talk.

A star is born

Now that 'Practical Basketry Techniques' has taken its first steps out into the big wide world I feel I can give more space on this blog to tracing my own steps and gathering my thoughts as I move on with other projects.  I've been working on a few new lines of enquiry recently, one of which has involved picking up strands from previous work.

NOVA 2012. Photo: Sylvain Deleu

 

One of the strands is my fascination with this hyperbolic paraboloid structure.  It lends itself to different configurations and I'm always wanting to explore new variations, scales, meanings and contexts. I was surprised and thrilled to see that this image of NOVA, my 'portrait in the making' had been used in 'Crafts' magazine as an illustration for the Craft Council's director Rosie Greenlees piece on 'Craft in an Age of Change'.  Reflecting on Sylvain Deleu's image with a blurred human figure in the foreground and a glimpse of a sunlit green world in the background made me want to retrace the making process of this piece.  NOVA came from nature and is an expression of an aspect of my nature yet hangs suspended between both.

The challenge we, the 17 emerging makers from the first cohort of the Craft Council's Hothouse programme, set ourselves for the exhibition 'Portraits in the Making' at Pitzhanger Manor Gallery and House in 2011 was to respond to architect and collector John Soane's reference to Pitzhanger as 'a sort of portrait'.  We left the interpretation wide open but self-portraiture was always an option.  Each of us  started our making process by filling in the dots of an I-statement, 'I am a ...'  Making such a personal statement can be a challenge in itself.  Many makers, when writing their artist statement, feel more comfortable with the third person passive voice which allows them to stand at a slight distance from their own words and actions.  No grammatical sleight-of-hand here though, no blurring of the boundaries between the speaking subject and the self-made object.  We had to stand out in full view.

My I-statement was 'I am a ... STAR'  (my name means 'star' in Latin).  It's been a bit of a challenge all my life.  I always liked the association with the twinkly, shiny things in the night sky and even with the many different ways these objects are represented in verbal and visual imagery. The associations with stardom and celebrity were more problematic.  

But this exhibition was our opportunity to shine. 'Don't hide your light under a bushel!' the old proverb advises.  Furthermore, my lucky star was winking at me on the first site visit when we were told that it would be possible only to hang works on existing fixtures as Pitzhanger is a Grade I listed building.

There in the central domed skylight of the gallery was not only a brilliant star burst but, right in the middle, a hook!  I had my reference point.  Soane was noted for his pre-occupation with light and space that had sparked a revolution in architecture and I also had a literal hook from which to suspend a large scale structure.

I was right in the middle of making and writing up projects for 'Practical Basketry Techniques' with little time to develop a completely new line of work on the scale required.  Madeleine Furness, of the Craft Council Maker Development team has a great phrase for just such a situation - you have to 'manage your expectations'. In this case, make something that isn't overly ambitious given the time constraints .  I hadn't made a large suspended structure before but I had made several wall-hung hyperbolic paraboloids on a smaller scale.  There wouldn't be anywhere I could test a larger prototype. Getting the piece installed would require a scaffolding tower and several willing gallery assistants  - so it would have to work first time.  With the help of Vanessa Moore, the exhibitions officer, we calculated all the measurements and the buildings officer okayed the weight restrictions.  I just needed a lot of big willow.

                                               A bolt of 7' buff willow on my studio floor

300 rods and I needed 200 of the best - time to get sorting.  I also needed to straighten them.  Willow has no 'memory' -  the rods will remain straight once they have been gently coaxed into shape.  It was very time consuming - you don't need to know how many hours!  To avoid repetitive strain I worked on other smaller pieces for my 'Cabinet of Curiosities' in between straightening stints.

Then it was onto the fun bit - spray painting the rods.  Spacing them all out like this  to dry reminded me of a plantation in France I'd used as inspiration for another piece.  I love the making process - it sparks off such a myriad of connections, associations and ideas for future projects.

Then there was more sorting and choosing: this time 180 of the best painted rods.  'Choosing' is a bit of a skilled process in willow work - the eye gradually adjusts to spot the weak, cankerous or discoloured - survival of the fittest!

These are my chosen 'desire lines'.  We are star-dust - our blood contains the iron from a zillion dead stars. Had to paint them in the garden as the 4m rods wouldn't fit into the car to get them to the studio.  No time to mow the lawn last summer!

I had to return to weaving on the living room table for the same reason.  Irksome, as I was paying rent on the studio all the while.  Made me smile though when I read another maker's blog recently and she was commenting on how work produced in a domestic environment has a tendency to be domestic in scale and ambition.  An interesting point. (see www.vandacampbell.blogspot.com)

                                     All packed and ready to go - hope the van's big enough.

                                                            Just got it in with mm to spare.

                                                          

                                                                  Unwrapped on site.

                                                                    Together at last.

 I don't have insurance to climb scaffolding towers - shame!

     Emerged! A perfect fit.  At 5.50 metres high it skimmed the floor with centimetres to spare. 

NOVA - the lighter side, brighter than a thousand suns. Photo: Sylvain Deleu

The dark side - fading fast. Photo: Sylvain Deleu

The name:  NOVA  literally means 'new', or, in astrophysics refers to a nuclear fusion of hydrogen and helium on the surface of a white dwarf star causing an explosion of energy which makes it appear to shine extra brightly for a period before fading over time ...........  de stella nova.