Originally training as a jeweller and silversmith, I now apply that training to my work with discarded books. My current project is an ongoing series called ‘Living on the Edge’.
Moving to Suffolk some twenty years ago, has brought the issue of coastal erosion sharply into focus for me and this concern has woven its way into the heart of the series.
My work is inspired by stories, poems, over-hearings and memories. I am greatly concerned with green issues so the re-use of materials is an integral part of what I make. Observing waste of resources, particularly books and textiles, drives me to find new raisons d'être for these discarded souls.
For me, the act of creating is a slow, time-consuming process and it tends to grow organically, developing as it is being made. The books I use in my work are damaged books that will otherwise be sent for pulping or to landfill. Sometimes the damage will dictate the way a piece develops as I love the way a book can tell its life story with signs of wear, use or misuse.
I combine my love of storytelling and architecture to create little houses standing in their own paper landscape telling their tale about life’s ifs, buts and whens. Some houses are argumentative, some are sad, some are jubilant, many are simply lost. They all have a story to tell and they are hardly ever shy of talking back. The one thing they all have in common is that they are all living on the edge in some way as I think many of us do… They, and the stories they tell, stand as metaphors for our own human condition.
I make unique, eco-friendly paper sculptures for a variety of galleries, exhibitions and as private commissions.
