Despite Perils, Decide to Hope

Thank you so much for your beautiful and comforting responses to my last post. I have not been able to reply to them all but have read every single message and taken solace from your kind words. You have reminded me that we all experience loss, and how that loss is deeply connected with love.

I’ve been with my brother and nephew this week but had to come home on Thursday evening to tend to our new naughty cats (of which more news soon) and our chickens. I also had a place on a workshop with a wonderful local artist whose work I really admire, and felt it would be really helpful to go.

Joan Glasgow is a Hastings-based multimedia artist. I first saw her work in the superb BLACK JOY! Up Close and Personal Exhibition curated by my dear friend Lorna Hamilton-Brown RCA, MBE. Joan exhibited a superb collage in this show, in which images representing colonialism and the pomp and ceremony of empire are juxtaposed with images of Black women engaged in a kind of shared and resistant magic. Through a grid of Beefeaters outside Buckingham Palace, two Black women adorned with gems and makeup exchange a knowing look. To me this collage speaks to how humour and private communication are key to surviving structures of oppression; it celebrates and bears witness to the ways in which Black women use beauty and sisterhood to resist the ugliness and violence of the racist, heterosexist patriarchy; and it demonstrates the subtle ways in which Black women create special, sacred places that lie apart and away from violence and bigotry.

I love this collage for its combination of message and media; its powerful mischief; and how it speaks to the theme of Black Joy. I have a cherished giclée print, and when I saw that Joan was running a workshop as part of Curious Town* I signed up at once.

The workshop was held at The Compound on Bexhill Road, where I have my studio. Joan had set up the space so invitingly with piles of magazines and sheets of sturdy cardboard; pritt sticks; coloured papers; and good sharp scissors for all. She explained to us all that THERE ARE NO RULES and encouraged me to just get stuck in and play. It was so joyful and restorative to dive into all the piles of magazines and papers, and just let something come together without any pre-planning.

With collage I find the materials themselves always shape the outcome. When I make a collage it always feels like the make-it-up-as-you-go stories I used to love creating as a kid. You find a photo or some words that make you think of this or that, and then you find something else. Slowly, slowly the meaning, or the idea you are putting together, emerges. Instead of the final result being shaped by your hand, or how you hold the brush, what makes a collage personal is your mind: what it latches onto; how it organises and responds to snippets of paper; how it uses words and images and colours to process and express experiences. I was struck by a title for an article in a National Geographic magazine that said “Despite Perils, Decide to Hope”. With everything going on in my family right now – but also in the wider world and this demoralising political moment – I found this phrase deeply resonant.

Slowly I began to amass images representing perils: poisonous jellyfish; books tinted with a highly toxic shade of green; and weird microbes with little jagged teeth photographed at a very high resolution.

I found images of hope as well: someone watering a garden; birds and sunsets; someone caring for a loved-one in a hospital bed; bears sleeping in flowers and on rocks; and a resting cat.

I put the words “Decide to Hope” on a heart cut out of some shiny teal coloured paper because teal was Mel’s favourite colour. The flowers she loved and other jewel-tones made their way into my selection, too. I worked out the order in which each image needed to be stuck to the board and, by the end of the workshop, had a lighter heart and a beautiful image to take home with me.

These are not words or a phrase I would have come up with on my own but somehow they fit. Today, looking at my collage, I find I’m thinking how much I love Joan’s work; how grateful I am for the enabling environment she created in her workshop; and how much easier grief is to bear when you live in an amazing town full of artists who are willing to help you find the language, the colours, the snippets of paper that you need.

Yours in the power of art, Fx

*Curious Town is a glorious event organised by my friends at Curious Agenda, who also have a studio at The Compound. Curious Agenda are a Community Interest Company working to ignite a sense of wonder in everyone. I am offering a workshop as part of Curious Town this Thursday and will talk about that more tomorrow.