Summer

Well the show is in its last week now so anyone wanting to visit needs to act now! The last day being Monday 4th August.
The children broke up for summer holidays over a week ago now and things have come to a standstill workwise as a result.
I am hoping to get a couple of days in here and there because I have a number of projects in the planning but apart from that I am focussing on spending time with my little girls. These are days I can never get back once they're gone and know I must make the most of every moment. Sometimes this is difficult to appreciate, so to keep a few moments just for me I have my knitting and two books on the go, to be able to say this would have been only a dream a few years ago. The children really are at a lovely age where I actuallyhave a few moments in between the madness!

The first book is Ted Hughes collection of poems "Birthday Letters". I bought this as a present to myself for graduating uni. in 1999!!! I have been dipping in and out of it ever since and as time has gone on I've realised the biographical nature of the work means it really should be read cover to cover like a novel. So that's what I am doing. You have to read it really kind of fast and furiously in parts to absorb the pouring of memory onto the page. It is very moving(think love, loss and death!!) but takes me to a whole other place in my mind which is just what I need when sitting in the playground with my brain slowly melting into oblivion.

The other is "Dear Tom" by Tom Courtenay. This was a gift from someone at a workshop I did earlier this year, again this is biographical, a combination of the author's life story but with an equal emphasis on his mother's life story. It's basically a story of living in a place that feels like home and yet doesn't reflect who you are or what you want from life. Belonging and not belonging all rolled into one.

This is how I feel about my relationship with Stoke-on-Trent, full of strange contradictions.

Last weekend we went away to Borth near Aberystwyth. After the initial sense of panic that's developed every time I leave home had passed I was so thrilled to be by the sea.

Having lived by the sea when I was young there is something about it that I just cannot explain that leaves me feeling balanced and refreshed just by being near it. For me it is the only thing that Stoke-on-Trent lacks.

I was also very pleased to find a couple of crumbling buildings to feed my addiction.

Show's UP!

Ok it's a been a few weeks since I posted but the 'Heirloom' exhibition is up and I am pretty pleased with how it looks. Less cluttered than last time and I actually brought a couple of pieces back home with me because I didn't want to hang one above another.
I like to think that this collection is more considered than previous work and therefore wanted a more minimal layout.
It is on at Burslem School of Art until Monday 4th August 2008 and here's the pic's!




Extracts from the accompanying written piece which is available at the gallery or by emailing me via the website http://www.rachel-grant.com/

"While creating this collection of new work I have been interested in the questions relating to the ‘evidence of our past’, from buildings and homes right through to tiny artefacts and found items, many of which are on display in varying ways within this exhibition. Wallpaper removed from terraces in the process of being demolished for example, shards of pottery embedded within felted knit, a 1929 sixpence sitting amongst thumbnail images of a scarred city and family history correspondence hanging without apparent function.
Both as individuals and communities we are faced with the decisions of what we should preserve and what we can safely discard, and equally who should be responsible for these decisions."

"We cannot live in the past but equally we cannot live in the future. It is easy to perceive the regeneration programme as a remedial process, with a defined beginning and end. Indeed the funding may have a clear start and finish but improvement is ongoing and cannot be defined by any one set of indicators. This idea is expressed in the two linen panels titled ‘Unfinished’. The first, Winchester Cathedral, was passed to me from a Great Aunt who had begun to embroider over the transfer background, and my grandmother had then continued it. Included with the embroidery was a skein of matching thread, with the intention that I pick up where they had left off. In the same way I have created the second panel with a transfer of the Sadler’s Park housing development in Burslem. The initial stitches are made, the matching thread attached, it is now ready to be passed on to the next generation for them to make their own mark." Rachel Grant ©2008