Shadow sack is a stitched sculpture, with knitted grey tentacles leaking out of it and spooling onto the floor. Amongst the multiple grey strands of knitting there are several golden tendrils.
It was made for a community project and exhibition called 'Instructions Not Included. A friend of mine, Amanda Hall, invited women to embellish a used swimming costume with their thoughts about women and ageing. The project became much bigger than she had anticipated and in the end she had nearly 80 stunning and poignant transformed swimsuits. It was a fabulous project to be part of!
Poet and author, Robert Bly, suggests that we all drag behind us a long bag which contains things we have repressed since childhood – passions, feelings, memories, behaviours and more. He calls it a shadow sack.
As we get older our shadow sack begins to leak and we’re compelled to examine the contents. Sometimes we find gold amongst the shadows.
What’s in your shadow sack?
For more about the sculpture, please see Shadow sack, 2024.
Another part of my process is performative and involves some kind of physical interaction with my work. I often wear it, if that’s possible. I think it’s a way of embodying it, of making it me.
Here I am interacting spontaneously with my latest stitched sculpture, Shadow sack , in our garden on a sunny day in April…. Some kind of weird private performance? Welcome to my world!