Thursday, 10 February 2011
The Suitcase Project
This April will see the launch of The Suitcase Project. I am starting an initiative which takes suitcases as its starting point. The aim is to encourage groups of people to bring a precious object and tell their story through it. Each item will be placed in a suitcase and another person will pick out an object that interests them. They might try to guess its purpose to begin with, or ask whose object it is. I hope to do three different types of workshop. One with bereaved people, one with people who live in the UK but have come here from a different homeland, one with Church and community groups. The aim of the workshops is to strenghthen relationships and bring healing through the sharing of our personal stories in a safe environment.
Christmas Treasure boxes
We are half way through February here in the UK. This means we are starting to see clutches of snow drops bringing with them the memory of Spring. Next week I will be starting to design my Treasure boxes for Christmas and boxes for giving home-made gifts. I have been speaking with lots of people about memories and Christmas trees. For many of my friends Christmas tree decorations trace the years. Different decorations follow different years of their children's lives. Angels of happy times, strange little objects of other more difficult times. Their Christmas trees are a map of their lives, their ornaments brought out year upon year in celebration. I think that Christmas trees are a Memoration, because they are a creative way of remembering and annual ritual.
We tried to do away with a Christmas tree this year. We were going to go cool and minimalist. Pale twigs with silver spray and the odd fir cone. Friends and family alike advised against it. It seemed to be too radical a step. I wasn't convinced of my own argument and was unconvincing in my proposals. In the end I couldn't do it. We bought the poor tree, severed from its forest somewhere, dragged it into a corner of our living room and left it to drop its needles over the next few weeks. But its sacrifice was worth it. Our Christmas trunk takes all our Christmas kit. It is an old wooden trunk used by my Grandad when he was in the 7th Hussaars, on horse back in India. I think it was during the 1920s, and it is stained and dark brown with weather and travel. It seems that these wooden trunks were used by the British army instead of suitcases then. It is an ugly old trunk, but I can't seem to part with it. When you open it has my Grandad's signature in pencil scrawled in the copperplate writing he learned with the railways.
Now it no longer contains the equipment used by a soldier in the calvary in the early 1900s but is stuffed to the gills with glass baubles. Year on year I go to the same shop and buy another glass bauble, silvered with silver leaf. One year an icicle, one year a tear drop or a twisted hard boiled sweet, some frosted, some sculpted, some plain. It is my one concession to 'collecting'. The nearest thing I have to a collection. What is significant is the way in which I store them. Each one painstakingly wrapped in tissue and bubble wrap and then meticulously labelled with my favourite Christmas cards from each year. My friend Pauline finds me ridiculous, but I have decided that it is a very human impulse. I think I am protecting what is precious, wrapping the fragile accumulations of the years, the beautiful things.
This is why I am creating a range of Christmas treasure boxes in which to store people's favourite decorations. They are to be created from recycled or unwanted materials. Making sacred that which is discarded. I'm getting started now, because I think they will be popular. Everyone who celebrates Christmas, or has a tree, has Christmas tree decorations. For many people they are more than value packs from Poundland. Many are home-made. I even have a beautiful leaf-shaped ornament created from straw which has a picture of a heron embroidered onto it. It was randomly sent to me from Pakistan by a Kathak dancer I once attended a ballet class with, I had forgotten all about him, but he had not forgotten me.
We tried to do away with a Christmas tree this year. We were going to go cool and minimalist. Pale twigs with silver spray and the odd fir cone. Friends and family alike advised against it. It seemed to be too radical a step. I wasn't convinced of my own argument and was unconvincing in my proposals. In the end I couldn't do it. We bought the poor tree, severed from its forest somewhere, dragged it into a corner of our living room and left it to drop its needles over the next few weeks. But its sacrifice was worth it. Our Christmas trunk takes all our Christmas kit. It is an old wooden trunk used by my Grandad when he was in the 7th Hussaars, on horse back in India. I think it was during the 1920s, and it is stained and dark brown with weather and travel. It seems that these wooden trunks were used by the British army instead of suitcases then. It is an ugly old trunk, but I can't seem to part with it. When you open it has my Grandad's signature in pencil scrawled in the copperplate writing he learned with the railways.
Now it no longer contains the equipment used by a soldier in the calvary in the early 1900s but is stuffed to the gills with glass baubles. Year on year I go to the same shop and buy another glass bauble, silvered with silver leaf. One year an icicle, one year a tear drop or a twisted hard boiled sweet, some frosted, some sculpted, some plain. It is my one concession to 'collecting'. The nearest thing I have to a collection. What is significant is the way in which I store them. Each one painstakingly wrapped in tissue and bubble wrap and then meticulously labelled with my favourite Christmas cards from each year. My friend Pauline finds me ridiculous, but I have decided that it is a very human impulse. I think I am protecting what is precious, wrapping the fragile accumulations of the years, the beautiful things.
This is why I am creating a range of Christmas treasure boxes in which to store people's favourite decorations. They are to be created from recycled or unwanted materials. Making sacred that which is discarded. I'm getting started now, because I think they will be popular. Everyone who celebrates Christmas, or has a tree, has Christmas tree decorations. For many people they are more than value packs from Poundland. Many are home-made. I even have a beautiful leaf-shaped ornament created from straw which has a picture of a heron embroidered onto it. It was randomly sent to me from Pakistan by a Kathak dancer I once attended a ballet class with, I had forgotten all about him, but he had not forgotten me.
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