The assemblages are a part of my visual joy. I love arranging items wherever I am. I collect huge amounts of interesting bits and pieces, many rusty and discarded. Sometimes it is the colour, the shape, some sentimental attachment to a time place or person.
The shelf assemblages are created with different themes, colour restrictions or because the shapes work together. The process is time consuming as the whole has to work together and each shelf must work with the other shelves.
Sometimes only a small bit works and the rest must be removed for a rethink.
The rusty tools are from the land where I live in Suffolk, gifts from builder friends, gardeners- things I find when away that catch my ever-watchful eye.
Some things I can’t identify and viewers at the exhibition inform me, ‘that is a drill part from a plough,’ and ‘that’s an equestrian curry comb,’ which become stories inspired by each piece.
Sometimes I just create an assemblage which is a composition with discarded items which I play with until the whole works. The components I choose are random finds over time. I rummage through the dismal remains of the heap of crushed brick for hard-core and extract shattered cast iron cisterns, shards of bathroom tiles, and wire pulled into curious shapes embedded in concrete lumps. I have a collection of oak offcuts, Suffolk pavement tiles, burnt wood and metal from the builders’ bonfire, builders’ detritus, pretty beads and plastic flowers, bottles, car bits, farm iron wear, to be placed.
They are all there for me to play with, to reframe the discarded into the interesting and beautiful piece of art.
I have a love of vases of flowers, so many images I make into three dimensional collages represent this subject as do my sculptures.
I love visual jokes and this is part of my sculpture.
