 photo credit: Chris SmartAfter obtaining a Fine Arts degree in the early eighties, my understanding of paper and related media was further enhanced through two periods of long-term study in Japan in the mid to late eighties (supported by the Japan Foundation and the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.)
In 1991, I was given a joint award with South East Arts and the British Council to research art based organisations and community groups in Canada. I focused on those, which used re-cycled and found materials in their projects. During this period of study I gave talks and workshops demonstrating my own techniques. This proved a most fulfilling exchange, which had long term influence on my future explorations.
I continue to develop my techniques working in both gallery and non-gallery spaces. I like to use discarded items, waste material no longer considered useful. My work is informed by personal experience, places visited, stories of my Romany grandmother, old and forgotten textiles. Recycled materials and waste have a history'. These I break down, tear, and cut, until they are re-assembled to create something more meaningful. Fragments and layers mark the passing of time, the rituals of making (cutting paper, gathering materials, machining, sewing) acting as part of the narrative of the work.
I am interested in the open landscape, the shadows of marks made by man in the earth, the reflections in water and flooded fields, gardens and seasons changing.
I have a love-hate relationship with nature. I spend time outdoors as part of necessity as I do not drive. You experience the pull of the land in a very different way when walking on a cold winters day to a sunny afternoon. It is quite different to viewing it through a car window. The land is very much part of all of us, no matter how much we try to suppress it with concrete and motorways. Things return to the wild if we left well alone, and suppress our need to tame and control. I like to think my work, as an expression of my current interest, serves as a reminder of this connection to nature. The 'landscape' is the great subject matter of the painter or photographer. Textile artists don't do land do they?
I am becoming more aware of conservation issues and am interested in recording the changes that might impact on the flora and landscape of South East of England and my adopted County, Kent. I am looking at political and social as well as climatic change. Recent flooding, as witnessed in the American South and the Tsunami is South East Asia, and its impressive physical changes to the landscape raises issues about our fragile relationship with the local and global environment. No one who has grown up in the flat Norfolk landscape as a child can fail to make connections between change and man's impact on the land through farming, building and use of world resources.
It is this attitude to looking at the context and the narrative quality of my work, which enables me to create pieces with relevance to given situations, audiences and locations. I am motivated by exchange with others as part of this process. I run workshops with schools and communities, using 'what is there', (natural and found materials to create drawings and 3d pieces). I am open to looking at new approaches to encouraging other to investigate and develop their own ideas and their relationship to the land.By combining the advantages of new technology with textile and paper based work I seek to push the boundaries between tradition and innovation and extend further my visual vocabulary.
More recently, an Individual Award from Arts Council England South East allowed for further research and exchange in India and the U.K. This has resulted in a new body of work. Traces which began its tour at Rochester High Street Gallery under the invitation of the Medway Arts Team. Some of the pieces are also included in the touring exhibition, Transitions, originating from Bilston Craft Gallery from April 2008. See exhibitions and events for further details.
www.axisartists.org/artist/casholmes |
