It can be hard for humans to feel that always, because of the feeling of the need to build up fortress walls: To keep going to get by to not get hurt, by other humans and things. I guess it comes back to a sense of individual responsibility and what is expected of us in the time and place and culture we live in.

At times you might notice that your body is more than a surface. That your skin is not an impermeable barrier, but merely a strong piece of cloth. That lets some things in and some things out.

At times you might notice the constant shift and the fluctuating temperatures of the other forms that exist inside your surface body. If you are very quiet and sit still you might notice that there is a tingling feeling that moves at a constant throughout all of the thing that is you.

There are gaps between cells and cell walls (What is in that gap?) Our body is made up of water. Space and Constellations in the sky.

Recently Sarah has been adorning her aprons with bold dark text that stands in contrast to the softer pastel colours and splodge-like interventions she favoured previously. The screen-printed text includes phrases such as:

Cultural Producer Precarious Worker Surplus Art Producer Contemporary Rag Picker.

Sarah has an ear for the playful and absurd in language and she plays with her chosen text enjoying the shifting of shapes and meanings. Yet despite the sense of fun in the word play the sentiment underlying the activity is a serious contemplation of the artist’s role in contemporary society. Sarah has recently become interested in the writing of artist Gregory Sholette whose essays and books bring to light the difficult social and economic role of the modern day artist. He writes superfluous artists;

Form an indistinct backdrop against which the

small percentage of artists who succeed appear

sharply focused… although the number of artists

has greatly increased in recent years the hierarchy

amongst artists, always evident, appears to have

become increasingly stratified.4

The infiltration of this dark lettering and its reflec-tion on the politics of art making creates a tension between the softness of the fabric and the sense of creative play and freedom that is inherent in Sarah’s work.

Nature vs Culture Hard vs Soft Organic vs Mechanical Personal vs Political

There are multiple pressures that affect the creative life of any artist. Time, money, purpose, expectations, the pressure of competition, the existing hierarchies. It is not so different from the competing forces in any one person’s life between desire and actuality. Your understanding of who you are, versus who you want to be, versus your wealth, your race, your family, your gender, the politics of your day.

N O WAS T E P R ACT I C E

Sarah told me that she tries to conduct a no or at least lo-waste practice. She makes use of pre-used materials from her studio and has an eye for the unanticipated material, having in the past used old coffee grounds and snippets of friend’s clothes to generate her work. Her recent apron paintings are an elegant extension of this sustainable sentiment. Using durable linen she constructs wearable art-works decorated with the existing stuff of her studio-space. If someone commissions a new apron she inhabits the dressmaker and measures the client up so that it fits perfectly. These works, which can be both worn as clothing and hung as an art object, are designed to last for many years and Sarah insists that she doesn’t want to lose touch with them. She encourages that the client return for alterations, so that she can mend the work if necessary, or add paint where it has become washed out. These decorative elements and the linen itself evolve with the wearer, shifting over time with its context and environment. This kind of work takes time (to make by hand) time (to wear and evolve) and sensitivity, responsiveness to other humans and the world they are part of.

The Reichian therapist Elsworth Baker wrote that in the human organism:

More energy is built up than is discharged; if this

were to continue the organism would either have

to grow continually or burst. To maintain a stable,

economic energy level, excess energy must be

discharged at more or less regular intervals. This

economic discharging of energy is the function of

the orgasm.’1

The orgasm meant everything to Reich, but really the process can be placed inside the larger concept of continuous expansion and contraction of a body as it moves through life.

Sarah’s desire for a no waste practice could be interpreted as a desire for equilibrium. A regulation of intake and output that aspires to be in a kind of harmony with the artist and her surrounds. Sarah is a maker of things, a person who understands what theorist Ellen Dissanyake has described as the ‘inherent pleasure in making’2. And whilst making can be pleasurable and meaningful, a maker must inevitably confront the consequences of their production with questions such as:

What do I do with all this stuff? How do I cope with adding additional objects to an already object crammed world?

The Owerri tribe of Nigeria could be seen to provide a solution to this problem. During their Mbari ritual, 30 to 40 people would spend two years constructing giant ceremonial sculptures out of clay only to let these painstakingly crafted artworks dissolve with the rain and sun when the feasting was completed and the ceremony was over: Equilibrium3.

Wilhelm Reich had this idea about bodies. He said that our bodies are organisms whose optimum health is engendered through the appropriate intake and discharge of energy.

Energy comes in: food fluid air.

Energy moves out by: activity excretion emotional expression thinking heat radiat ing

T E N N SSS I I O N

Sarah’s apron paintings could be seen to embody the contradictions and tensions we all face between competing pressures and desires, between what the world wants from us and want we want for ourselves. As psychologist Karen Signell writes;

From the beginning of life, how good it feels to move at our own individual pace

and in accordance with the wider rhythms around us, and how alienating to our

personhood to be restricted in our movement or speeded up, discordant with our

surroundings.5

Perhaps you didn’t know that when a snail breaks its shell its life is not necessarily over. The most important substance in a snail’s world is slime; it uses slime to move, to mate and to heal. When hurt, a snail will secrete large amounts of medicine slime that can mend its broken carapace. As Oliver Goldsmith described in 1774;

Sometimes these animals are crushed seemingly to pieces, and, to all appear-

ance, utterly destroyed; yet still they set themselves to work, and, in a few days,

mend all their numerous breaches…to the re-establishment of the ruined habita-

tion. But all the junctures are very easily seen, for they have a fresher colour that

the rest; and the whole shell, in some measure, resembles an old coat patched

with new pieces.6

Sarah’s apron creations are still relatively young but in time and with continuing wear and repair they may begin to echo the organic resilience of the snail. Snails like Sarah’s works take their time. Their slow pace represents an attitude a fast-paced society has largely lost and that many in a citied world would like to relearn. The unglamorous snail is the antithesis to a fast-paced image driven society.

The ultimate freedom. To be your own body. To listen to your own mechanics. To move at your own pace.

ALANNA LORENZON

1 Baker, Elsworth, The Man in the Trap, 1967, New York, Collier Books, p.55.

2 Dissanyake, Ellen, The Pleasure and Meaning of Making, American Craft, Apr 1995; 55, 2; ProQuest p.40.

3 Dissanyake, E. (1995). The Pleasure and Meaning of Making, American Craft; Vol. 55, 2.

4 Sholette, Gregory (2008). Swamp Walls Dark Matter & The Lumpen Army of Art, Proximity Magazine, Issue:001, p.39.

5 Signell, K. (1990). Wisdom of the heart: Working with women’s dreams. New York: Fromm International Press, p.55.

6 Goldsmith, O. (1881). A History of The Earth and Animated Nature. New York: Worthington, p.623.