What do you do?
My father once said to me, as I failed to understand an event in my life that had no clear beginning, middle or end. “The problem is you live in a world of narrative don’t you.” and he was right.
I often panic when someone asks me what I do, or what I am. Too self conscious of my drawing to call myself an artist, too aware of my failings to call myself a writer. I sit here in my Studio in Cornwall, (for a long time I called it only half jokingly my ‘ill-defined creative venture’) with the audacious ignorance of not knowing exactly what it is I do, even while doing it. Perhaps because I’ve spent years working towards living a life where ‘what I do’ can change everyday. Probably the best one-size-fits-all answer that I can give is that I trade in stories.
What I do involves bookbinding. But it also involves writing (more specifically playwrighting*) printmaking, drawing, designing, teaching, researching, listening, drinking slightly too much coffee and connecting with people.
I help articulate stories or stage artists’ works to their best advantage.
I find binding solutions for poets who have hoarded stacks of individual pages, or ways of keeping the recipes written on the backs of envelopes and phone bills (that a mother left her son) safe.
That ephemera you keep, those ticket stubs and postcards - I have a reverence for them too.
I have written a story for a child to help her understand why she doesn’t have an older brother anymore. I have written a book that was someone’s proposal.
I write plays to question the emotional impact of the legalities of restitution, or the limits of science, or the afterwards of war or why keeping a secret can be a beautiful thing
I approach each book I make as a kind of theatre. As an opportunity to stage a piece of work. When I teach bookbinding I call my class ‘The Paper Stage’ as every choice matters, the paper, the font, the spacing, the stitching, they all have an impact
But what matters most is stories.
Awards
Winner: Society of Book Binders, 2017: Wyvern Bindery Award for Best New Comer (Joint First)
Winner: Cultivator Studio Grant, 2017
Winner: Clothworkers Scholar, Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, 2016
Exhibitions
September 2019 - Society of Bookbinders Conference - Bath University
July 2019 - Bryer Gallery - Home Truths
May 2018 - Falmouth Art Gallery - Books on Books
April 2018 - Cornwall College - Ideas from the Attic
February 2018 - Open Studio - De Vay Nee Haslam
October 2017 - Society of Book Binders Conference - Bayntun's Bath
September 2017 - Society of Book Binders Conference - London Shepherds, Sangorski & Sutcliffe
August 2017 - Society of Book Binders Conference - Keel University
August 2017 - Open Studio - Lift it with the Feathers
June 2017 - St Austell Library - Books on Books
January 2017 - V&A - QEST Craft Alumni
June 2015 - St James' Palace - Prizegiving