EDGE 4.Growth
Welcome
to Edge 4!
Growth seems a very apt title for this issue, as our group of potential contributers has grown from just eight participants last issue to a whopping 30 group members! This is part due to the decision to make the magazine online rather than print only, and part thanks to the generous promotion by the Open College of the Arts in their weekly bulletin to students. Again we present a number of interpretations of this theme from a variety of disciplines including photography, drawing, print, textiles, and for the first time more of a focus on creative writing. As for my own creative growth, I was immensely proud to graduate from OCA with a CertHE this year and meet the inspiring Zandra Rhodes. A wonderful occasion to recognise and celebrate with loved ones the years of hard work. Cheers!
Busy As A Bee
The size of a honeybee colony varies through the year, reaching a peak in July. In early spring, the queen will increase her egg-laying to produce replacement workers for those who have worked hard to keep the colony warm and fed over winter, and to take advantage of the new pollen and nectar available from the early-flowering plants such as willow blossom and crocus. The growth of the nest increases and the bees construct new honeycomb to make room for extra stores and baby bees. Bees take 3 weeks to develop from an egg, to larva, to pupa before chewing through their wax capping out in to the bustle of the hive.
Jennifer Moore
Once hatched, they will take on housekeeping duties until they are fully developed and can start to forage - about 3 weeks later. In the height of summer, a mature queen honeybee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day, creating a sizeable workforce to efficiently and systematically pollinate and retrieve nectar from flowers in a 3-5 mile radius. The 60,000 bees in the colony require huge amounts of fuel in the form of honey to carry out this task, and work continually during daylight to gather stores for the colony. A foraging bee may only live for 3-4 weeks in good weather as she will wear herself out with the effort, but the youngsters coming up through the ranks will continue provisioning the hive as they too, join the flying team. The volume of a hive can reach 50-60 litres as the bees build new combs from flakes of wax exuded from glands in their abdomen. As autumn approaches, the queen reduces her laying as the colony will need fewer bees once the nectar has been collected, evaporated and capped as honey. This will need to last them until well in to the following spring so it’s imperative that they store enough otherwise they will starve. A cluster of 10,000 bees will overwinter, keeping the colony ticking over until the warmth of spring induces new growth from both plants and bees. As humans, we find this relentless activity and dedication to duty a stark reminder of our own rather lazy and cornercutting approach to life, and the honeybee colony has long been held to be a paragon of virtue and efficiency.
Jennifer Moore
Being Red Riding Hood Growth. We see it everywhere; in our children or even our vegetable garden. What about “life growth�, in direct relation to inspiration for our art? Recently I began a body of study relating to myself and my grandmother. Sometimes it is only when we reflect back on where we have come from, that we understand the present; our present selves with clarity. When I was small, I often visited my Narg (gran spent backwards); times spent were often surrounded by story
telling; my favourite being Red Riding Hood. I never understood why she never spoke to me from the written page; as a child acceptance was a riding factor. Only as I turn back to the past, do I see. She had macular degeneration and had subsequently lost her eye sight. It took growth of years me to appreciate her vocal art. All those memories, shelved.
Ailish Henderson
If you had told me even a few years ago that I would be inspired to create my BA work solely based on particles from our linked lives, I would have laughed. Again; it has taken growth: Growth of insight and artistic depth. Grandmother, What a big mouth you have, Thank you for telling me your story.
Ailish Henderson
Ailish Henderson
The Old Man At The Side Of
Sue Parr
f The Road He sits quietly at the edge of the road, his silhouette cutting a distinctive shape against the bare landscape. He is an old oak tree - but throughout winter his identity is indecipherable. Only come early spring, when the first signs of life appear on his branch tips, can you see who he really is. Throughout his growth he has been working hard against the wind. The constant struggle and grind have resulted in the gnarly, twisted form we see today. Some might call him deformed and yet, he is beautiful. Beautiful and unique in all his imperfections.
Sue Parr
The Big ‘C’ A mass, a growth, tumour, the menacing shadow. There are many euphemisms for cancer, which would indicate two things. Firstly, it is common (think of the hundreds of words Inuits have for snow), and secondly it is one of our last taboos. It ‘that shall not be named’. There are also a lot of words to describe having cancer. A fight, a battle, bravery. Why so often associated with this particular disease? “They just gave up, couldn’t fight it anymore”. Does this put pressure on people to put a brave face on it? The stiff upper lip perhaps? If I die, did I not fight hard enough? Blackout Poetry formed from extract from article: The Observer Sunday 14 May 2000 01.28 BST Book review, Nicci Gerrard Diamond, John “The Big C:Because Cowards Get Cancer Too” 1999, Vermillion, UK
Holly Norris
Holly Norris
Edgelands - 2 Years On
Anna Goodchild
Anna Goodchild
Anna Goodchild
Dusk
Arlene Sharp
Emigration Emigrating at the age of 30 demands growth. A new language and a new culture just aren’t accessible otherwise. Looking back after 40 plus years I can see that my life and personality were changed forever by the move. I was like a young oak that got hit by lightning so that instead of growing straight and tall on a single trunk, it was split and two main stems grew onward from that point. This produced a branched tree with a wider and leafier crown than the single trunk could ever have borne. In my case the strike of lightening was falling in love. With a suitcase of clothes I moved to the other side of the world. From “down-under” to Northern Europe. I spoke only English, had not studied any foreign languages at school, and had never been outside Australasia. Films and TV were dubbed. I had met lots of foreigners but all spoke some sort of English, even if not very well sometimes.
Gwenyth Wilson Rudström
Now suddenly I was the foreigner, unable to speak a single word of the local language, not even badly. I know that I was very naïve, and I was naïve, but I just hadn’t realized that it would be so different than speaking “easy English” A twelve year-old nephew who was learning to speak English in school was my private translator, and he did a great job. By the time the new term started and began learning my new language in school I was truly motivated to grow into my new language: to understand what people are saying both in person and on TV and radio, to read a recipe, a newspaper and a books, to write a shopping list, a note, or a letter. But it changed me. I use a different voice in my native English and my new language – did my larynx split like the trunk of the oak? I express myself differently. My pose is different. Like the oak with the divided trunk, I too have grown with two different main branches in my use of language.
Gwenyth Wilson Rudström
Gwenyth Wilson Rudstrรถm
Ode to Eric
Eric Monkman we love you soHow big could your brain grow? We hoped you’d win- alas, you did not Due to“Post hoc ergo propter hoc!” #monkmania Sue Parr
A Place to Call Home
Let the cities grow a bit so everyone has a home they can call their own. According to the 2012 National Ecosystem Assessment only 2.27% of England is built on. That’s houses, businesses, roads and pavements. The remaining 97.73% is fields, forests, parks, gardens and verges. We could afford to lose just a little of this space to build more homes. Let’s make small desirable so that we can make space for everyone.
Carol Hoy
The Making of Man
Clifford Herbert
To Grow... How do you dare to ask me who I am? You who have come here distrusting everything and everyone, seeking refuge in that nest where you feed a litter of vipers.. and yet you dare to ask me who I am. And what about you? I no longer find any remnant of that glow that illuminated everything you touched. I am looking back to discover what you have left behind, sunk in the dark well of the past and illuminated by the dim light of your dreams. What are you afraid of? Distance and time cover what we were. Each new layer was your answer, your defence to protect my delicate glare from those fierce looks that wanted to destroy it. Have you fulfilled your dream? I feel the end that will end the routine of the days to which we have been condemned, where sometimes a few flashes at twilight reminded me that you were still there. We look like two walkers in the dark night: we are faithful comrades, but we do not know each other.
Blas Gonzรกlez
Now that the noise has ceased and the music no longer sounds, I gradually regain the memory of my brilliance, buried until recently under layers of memory. Who cares what we were? Everything is quiet now, and the time is not over yet.. ..to grow.
Blas Gonzรกlez
A Great Ungrowing My first love is poetry. It is in this form that I encountered ‘growing’; or, more accurately ‘un-growing.’ Growing seemed to be something that wasn’t merely expected of you as a child, it was commanded. Everybody had an opinion on your growth: how big, long, tall, fast, fat, thin, able, messy… you were growing. Your growth was deemed acceptable conversation for all – from relatives to strangers, neighbours to sales assistants. I didn’t like ‘growing’ then, because it felt, already, to be a measure by which I could be ruled. But, in poetry I ungrew. I ungrew from having to structure sentences accurately. I found you could finish lines mid-page and punctuation could be deliberately awkward so as to create ambiguity for the reader. Poets rewilded language for me. They ungrew the rules. I loved those who, with one word, could make my brain dribble for more while my heart scraped my ribs to breathe. Poetry ungrew me back into myself. A self that was not yet over-wintered but who knew, somehow, that I would need this thing: poetry! Aged seven, I used to get the train to school.In my satchel I imagined I had a fierce dog that would alert me to danger, and bark and mutter at things that frightened me. In class, when I was bored he would sneak out and lie at my feet where I would feed him, give him water and we’d each look at the other with a knowing grin. I knew he was invisible, knew he was imaginary. I didn’t need to grow up to learn that.
Lottie Ellis
Nevertheless, grow up I did. I grew into an adult life that taught me you can be tested to the very edge of your sanity. I grew to learn that ‘gaslighting’ wasn’t simply preserved for an Ibsen play. I grew to experience that the very meaning of me might be destroyed by another human being. I learnt the devastation of fear and betrayal. I lived the isolation and terror of abuse. After it all: the survival, the leaving, the surviving, thinking I had escaped unharmed, undamaged and free, I discovered that I was wrong. Love broke me out of this delusion. Love didn’t demand that I grow strong from the situation. Love didn’t bargain with the balance of soul growth. Love simply stood me in front of its mirror. I saw nothing. No me. The abuse had eroded almost every last interior shred of me - save hope. Love asked of me the same as poetry had all those years ago. To look. To reach out. To connect. To trust. Love broke me out of my coping and asked that I be -mewhoever that might be. The ‘me’ I’d grown had been a reaction. I was neither ‘me’ nor the reflection of ‘me’. I existed solely in the reflecting. Waif like I held no form. Love continued to hold me in its stare. Unremittingly. So, in a language without words, between the silence and the unvoiced, I trace in my poem-sketches an ungrowing me. Line by line, a tangible mark of me appears: witness, curious, fragile, beginning… seen and heard.
Lottie Ellis
When The Words Won’t Come O
Lottie Ellis
Out
Lottie Ellis
Brew Your Own Ink
Influenced by the slow movement in textiles, and artists such as Claire Wellesley-Smith, Alice Fox, and India Flint, I have been investigating how I can use natural dyeing processes in my work. I am interested in bringing a sense of place to my pieces and the idea of using elements of my environment to form the substance of the work is appealing.
Holly Norris
As well as having an allotment where I can grow my own plants from which I can extract pigments, we also have a great number of open spaces for foraging. One particular forest was full of oak galls, produced by wasps to house them during their larval stage. Having collected the galls, I crushed them and simmered them in water for a few hours. The strained liqour was then boiled and reduced to a more concentrated and thicker ink. The colour can be blackened by using iron in the mix, and thickened further with gum arabic. As well as the connection with my walks and environment, there is a sense of history in using this ink. It has been used as ink since at least the time of the Roman Empire. Shakespeare wrote with it, the Magna Carta was scripted with it and Leonardo da Vinci drew with it. The ink I have made has a lovely fluidity to use. It can give a controlled strong line, or be used very loosely and allowed to run down the page. Life drawing classes were made all the more enjoyable by using it in a very loose way with a stick and brush at arms length, allowing it to pool and run.
Holly Norris
February Flowers
Nicky Eastaugh
Soaring Blue Studio
Sarah E. Jones
Medical Museums
Sketch of lungs at Hunterian Museum, London
Catherine Levey
If you had a growth on your body 200 years ago, doctors back then might have considered it unusual enough to end up in a display jar for teaching medical students, and public amusement. Whether you were keen on that or not didn’t really matter to these doctors, who didn’t have the same view of patient’s rights back then and would roam hospital wards looking for prize specimens. The jars were used to teach medical students, but also for public viewing. Doctors competed to produce the best collections, bidding in body part auctions and the surgeon John Hunter is one of the most famous. I joined the crowds gawping at these jars myself a few weeks ago, and I wondered if anything had changed in 200 years apart from a few people taking sneaky phone photos. The 7 foot 7-inch giant skeleton of Charles Byrne illustrates the period very well. He sadly died young at the age of 22 with a pituitary tumour and knowing the interest in his skeleton, he paid for a burial at sea. Well, here he is at the Hunterian museum, so you can guess that didn’t go to plan. There’s calls for him to be buried at sea now, which is an interesting ethical question. Hunter himself ended up in jars in his own museum, but for him at least he had the choice…
Catherine Levey
Who are we? Holly Norris Having studied Textiles with OCA, I am a printmaker and mixed media textiles artist based in Portland, Dorset. I regularly exhibit at various galleries around the county. www.hollynorris.org
Sue Parr I live in West Dorset and am currently studying for a BA in Painting through the OCA. Contact: sueparr000@gmail.com
Ailish Henderson Freelance artist, designer, columnist and tutor; I provide talks, workshops and masterclasses in Textiles, Print Making and Fine Art. I had my first solo exhibition in March 2016, and have been published widely including Batsford’s “Be Creative With Textile Art”.
Arlene Sharp Fine Art student, Open College of the Arts
Carol Hoy I am an illustrator and artist based in Hertfordshire. I’m half way through a degree in Visual Communication with the OCA. https://www.instagram.com/calhoy/
Clifford Herbert Retired engineer and ex-OCA student. I live near some beautiful countryside and like to paint this in oil and watercolour. I have an embryo website at www. cliffordherbert.com which I will be slowly adding to.
Anna Goodchild I am a photography student and have just started Level 3. I flourish on cross-discipline work and really enjoy the company of students from other pathways who like to think differently about their work.
Blas GonzĂĄlez Spanish based photographer, studying at OCA since 2014. My body of work covers from street and social photography, portrait, documentary to conceptual art, especially on the latter where I usually explore identity issues through the visual language. https://www.instagram.com/blasgs/
Catherine Levey I’m a second year arts student of the Open College of the Arts and live in Nottingham. I’m interested in expressing hidden emotions through contemporary portraiture. Instagram: @profmeme Please look me up and say hello!
Gwenyth Wilson Rudström Retired engineer and fine arts student with OCA. Born in New Zealand, I have lived in Sweden since 1975. Living beside a lake and surrounded by forests and fields influences my choice of subjects in my paintings. I like to depict nature, its light, colors and moods in both a small and large scale.
Jennifer Moore I am studying Drawing Skills 1 with OCA, and live and work in rural East Sussex. I keep bees, and teach and give talks on the same. Instagram: @sevenhens Blog: www.jmoore515524d1.wordpress.com
Lottie Ellis Lottie wears many hats, but desires not to be defined by any of them. She remains curious and seek always for things to wonder about. She baffles both herself and those around her at times, but finds great solace in creating. She can be contacted via her Instagram account: @lottie_ellis_art
Nicky Eastaugh I will be starting Textiles 2 with OCA in September. My interests and influences include geometry and architecture, and social acceptance and and how this is interpreted through identity. I also like to use words as a stimulus for visual imagery.
Sarah E. Jones I am a mixed media artist based in the south of the UK specialising in abstract, semiabstract and landscape artwork. My work encompasses collage, acrylic, watercolour, various drawing media and ink. Facebook.com/SoaringbluestudioUK
Contributors are associated to, but content is not endorsed by the University for the Creative Arts, UK. All opinions expressed are those of the artist. Contributors retain copyright of their work and no part of this magazine is to be reproduced either digitally or physically without the express consent of the artist.
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