Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ve been making these inks, dyes, extractions – I’m perhaps even more unsure than before what to call them – for a few months. Not every day. Some days I just don’t want to have to think about what to do, or how to do it. In a single afternoon I watched the wind strip theContinue reading “making”

yellow escapes brown Bleeding into still – Wet parts of paper Under the iron’s heat Drawing one feature Out of the other.

Under the Scotswood Bridge, we cast a little yellow bucket over the railings. Phyllis’ photograph has been colourised with ‘July Morning Black’ ink I made from a handful of mahonia berries picked on a day a storm never quite arrived. They were combined with the splash of rust water we managed to scoop from theContinue reading “July Morning Black”

Fallen Virginia Creeper leaves Nothing on paper in spite The promise of rubies This red will remain Sealed in a vessel. Resolve to let it Run away retreat into air

Blackberries are like purple smiling paint bombs. We pick hundreds, eat a lot and bring home enough to make a gorgeous blue – like night.  We pick the moon. Pinch it Between a thumb and a finger. Don’t crush it, I say, Let’s eat it. I throw mine up Before you look into space WhereContinue reading “blackberry moon my satellite”

I print and dye some photographs that Phyllis took of our walk to the river to collect the water. I soak the images in pure river water mordant. The walk, the river, my son are immersed in their own subject matter. The process reveals an unseen terrain within and upon these landscapes. An essence; tideContinue reading “Paper”

My home studio, for making inks and dyes from rusty water and plants, is our kitchen and the picnic table in our tiny garden. There are traces of the last 20 months all around – everything is within reach and things pile up on top of and fall into each other.  I gently simmer ourContinue reading “Ink”

And so, we fell into Iron Water. It’s mordant bite fixes to then become Lightfast. Waterfast. Shifting colour, dulling and deepening Streaks of thin grey, saddening the shade. Lip pink. Blush brown. Introduce this ichor carefully now Its ferrous grip will eat right through your soft things Bridge nuts. Boat bolts. Images taken by PhyllisContinue reading “Iron Water”

I am becoming an iron water mum; an ongoing two-way process of mattering – bringing something to matter through action, or gesture. A becoming drawn out of the immateriality that exists within and between bodies. Tenuous, conditional, strenuous – a labour. It slips within and out of the folds of tradition, of heritage, lineage, ofContinue reading “Workshop”