I graduated from Dartington College of Arts in 1999 with a BA (Hons) degree in Visual Performance. This background afforded me the opportunity to develop my skills with performance art, installation and time-based media: crossing boundaries of existing disciplines. When looking back at my childhood I can’t avoid recalling all the fairy tale connections. Throughout my childhood my Father would spend most of his time in his workshop which was full of incredible objects that he had collected over the years. Our dining room was a miniature museum of automata which my Father had created: Witches riding in carriages; a magician doing card tricks; Bubbles, blowing bubbles; A young girl holding a bird and moving as if singing. My Mother would read fairy tales to me creating the voices of the characters and tell me of the fairy clock (Dandelion) and fairy shoes (white dead nettles). On my eighth Christmas I received a beautifully illustrated Grimm’s fairy tale book, which I still treasure. My interest in fairy tales returned to me as an adult. To me they are a link with my childhood, when everything was a learning experience and I was over – imaginative and a daydreamer. I discovered that most fairy tales are quite horrific; this juxtaposed with their childlike innocence is what drew me to them once again. Fairy tales contain both childhood innocence with the sometimes terrifying and macabre which I would like to create in my sculptures. I hope to provoke a feeling of unease and the uncanny. ‘In fairy tales the world of reality is left behind from the very start. Wish fulfilments, secret powers, omnipotence of thoughts, animation of inanimate objects, all the elements so common in fairy stories.’ My sculptures are mixed media, inspired by fairy tales and childhood memories. I begin with a wire- frame, then use paper and a plaster mix, followed by a rust oxidisation paint finish. I chose to work with these materials due to the delicate and fragile appearance. The rust represents deterioration, accentuating the fragility of childhood memories and how they fade with time. I finish by encasing them in a dome, archiving them; as a museum would do with a fragile object that would deteriorate over time. My intention is to capture a moment, as an illustrator would do. I feel that the materials I have chosen to use, enable me to capture a movement rather than a static moment which hopefully creates a more interesting, and captivating sculpture.
