Circling Round, Circling Back
A selection of old artworks reconfigured as circles
Each time I start a new project I think “that’s a new idea”. However the more I make, the more I realise that I repeat the same themes, motifs, colour palette and forms that I have made in the past.
This realisation came to me as I was cleaning out my large paper drawers in preparation to sell them. They are large, bulky and heavy and I want to send them on their way in order to create more space in the garage.
This has meant pulling out each drawer and sorting through all the stored papers and artworks. A massive task! It has also meant that I had to reorganise and sort out my other small paper cabinet to make room for the new additions.
During this process I found all the circles of paper worlds I obsessively made during 2020. Beautiful thin cotton papers made on small circles of silkscreen clamped inside embroidery hoops. These cotton worlds I placed in the small drawers alongside the circular pulp paintings I made in Scotland and Iceland in 2022.
As I sorted and reorganised, I relived the experiences of each project. I first made kozo paper circles in France in 2018 to reference the silk industry in Lasalle. Silkworm larvae (called seeds) are transported in circular boxes. Silk worms eat the leaves of mulberry trees which provide the bark to make kozo paper.
In order to move papers from one set of drawers to the other, I had to decide what to keep and what to throw out or repurpose. I brought artworks onto my studio desk to assess them with fresh eyes. I rediscovered old screenprinted images and etchings, papers that I had kept for over ten years thinking they might be useful for a project that has never to date eventuated.
I took a deep breath and brought out my metal circle cutter. I started punching out small circles to add to cards. Then I found random pieces of a world jigsaw I had sewn onto my circles in 2020 to bring the world to me when I couldn’t travel.
The left over jigsaw pieces fit perfectly with the new circles on the tiny cards. All from different projects long finished, yet that impulse of encircling, connecting and creating networks of small circles, remains.
I still have a collection of wooden circular boards I haven’t done anything with yet. Maybe this process of connecting circles and circling back to my favourite themes, will help me move forward in my practice. The seeds of the past holding within them future possibilities.
Handmade paper circles: world circles, stitched circles, rock circles indigo dyed circles.
