Bucks Mills Cabin Art Residency

Bucks Mills Cabin Artist Residency. 

Arrived at the cabin. Nesting. 
Quiet.
Shimmering. 
This space is so beautiful. 
Things have stayed here as they were. Furniture. Brushes. Cups. Spoons. 
Beautiful inventory of objects. 
Totems of friendship. Love. Companionship. 
Intertwine. 
Dreaming. 
Being. 
Creating. 

I feel their presence. I didn't realise how being surrounded by the objects that belong to the artists will shift my focus for this week. 
I have always been interested in object capacity to hold history, to accumulate meaning. An imprint of the past. Our own personal archive. 
I'm also drawn to the artist such strong connection to this place, coastline, land. 

Bucks Mills has always been my solitary dream space.  My point of connection to the landscape that has become so integral to my work. 

" Some places are ports in what can be - for many people - a life both unsettled and stormy, spaces in which you can leave that which is familiar, all that you hold to be true, and move closer to all that is unknown. Closer to what some may view as the divine, the otherworldly: that which is rooted in something both constant, yet continuously ebbing and flowing.
They are in many ways a form of stopping place, liminal space that feels like it has been set aside for silence and deep, raw solitude. To carve out room within ourselves - unintentionally, even - to imagine what lies beyond the here and the now.
Places where the veil is thin allow for pauses in the flow of what we know - or think we know - of time” ,Kerri ni Dochartaigh 

“The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object” Proust

“Everywhere you rest your eyes, invisible stories blossom” Cohen

“There is no perception which is not full of memories. With the immediate and present data of our senses, we mingle a thousand details out of our past experience” Bergson

“Things are extension of us. We overlap with things and elements of things are hidden inside us. The meaning of the object lies not wholly in itself but somewhere between object and subject.”

Creating slowely
Creating in frenzy
Walking
Swimming
Reading
Daydreaming
Endless coffees to keep warm. 
Cut a bit of hedge to see the ocean. 

I Listened to lectures about both artists and how much time and love has been put into organising & preserving their archive. Diaries. Letters. Artwork. Objects. This very cabin at the edge of the cliff was so deeply loved by both artists: Mary Stella Edwards & Judith Ackland.
The joy of being able to finally purchase it in 1948. 
How they had to sell paintings & things to afford it. Sell among other things jewellery.

Inspired to make them a ring. 
Two rings 
One for each artist. 
Both curved forms closely relating to one another. 
Carved out from the same piece of wax. 
Made with imprints of rocks from the beach, shells & sand, stone walls of the cabin.  Collected traces of their life.                                                                                                     

I’ve studied their paintings today. 
Luminous watercolours of the shore. 
Observed tiny details of nature
Shells. Seaweed. Rocks. Light. Reflections 
Tiny figure of Judith always in red often appears in Mary Stella’s work. 

Dreamed of colours how we associate colour with memories. Feelings. Places. People. 
How colours can represent us in a beautifully abstract way. 

Mary: orange, ochre, greens, faint purple and pink, light blue

Judith: red, aubergine, purple, dusty pinks.