Read a voice

The silence rings a lonely tune.
Does it matter I'm forgetting you?

So read a voice, and speak a book.
It doesn't matter, the way you look.

It's just something we all mistook.

Wet Rabbit

Little wet Rabbit, sat on slab
I opened my umbrella,
but you ran too fast.

now you're all wet, and waiting to play.
It doesn't bother you.

Rain won't stop play.

If...

If our ideas are dreams, then how will we see?
because in the darkness, our lives will be.

Admittance ( through those unloved cups of coffee)

It's interesting really, I drank coffee because you did I never really liked it but like a child to a trusted one I gulped it down as you took one. And laughed and smiled with a burnt tongue, you'd talk and walk as I drank my thoughts. And tell me that " one day it would all be all right" and that even now it was " okay to tell me, whenever you want, whenever you want". Through the sips and painfully burnt tongue I'd  cry and avoid your eyes. I'd only manage a second when you told me to " look at you" but that was all it took. Somewhere between the steaming cups, my moist cheeks and your gentle gaze there was a point a way for me to gulp it down and say.At first you were a stranger in disguise quick to anger, scary a hater. Though something in you called you to me, and through my youth I saw your truth. The hand that guided helped and decided. And then one day I'd decided, I looked up unguided.

" I'm scared" I said. 

Colourful beads

These beads are almost automatic scribbles made from the left overs of the other beads I have created, looped into a bracelet they are almost an automatic sculpture which is wearable.  Because of the using up the leftovers nature of them I do not have enough to turn some of the colours into a bracelet, but maybe over time as the project evolves I will.

Ode to past pets: " Rex" bead

The Rex beads were the first beads I tried to make and it was also the first time I had attempted to use the type of (oven bake) clay I am using for this project. Although I had settled on creating beads for this project, I decided to attempt making a guinea pig shaped figure which as you can see did not work out. I either didn't prepare the clay right as it was stiff and difficult to shape and stick together or its just the wrong type of material to use for  more detailed work. I knew it didn't look like a guinea pig but an owl? a sheep maybe but not an owl. Regardless I got to work swirling up the colours of Rex's grey thick bushy fur.

my attempt at making a Rex figure

 The Rex beads for me have gone a lot better although at one point I realised i hadn't made the holes big enough for the elastic to go through so couldn't use them for anything but decoration.

These beads especially when made into a bracelet look to me like stone or marble carved into bead like shapes. The larger the beads it almost seems the more interesting or noticeable the patterns as you can have thick chunky bit of grey and black and white against small wispy swirls of the same colours. But the smaller the beads the more comfortable they are to wear something I am trying to keep in mind for my next "Pig" bead.

Rex

Ode to past pets: "Piggy bead"

It seems to me that this project is hard to plan, it simply shapes though time and thought it unfolds and then rolls into a small portable form with a hole in the middle. And so with manny images of Piggy surrounding me, I got to work softening the clay, shaping, twisting, pulling, rolling, swirl-mixing the colours seeing the patterns in old piggy's fur and copying them down into a condensed simplified replica:

My first Piggy bead attempts were too large and although all the colours were there (for me) too abstract to represent the subject

These beads are much better they are smaller the colours stand out much more and are shaped more like the patterns or shapes that I picked out on Piggy's fur.

 The end result of Piggy's bead portrait, I made enough chunky and not so chunky beads to make 2 versions of the Piggy Bracelet one smaller and easier to wear the other larger and better to see although  a little difficult to wear when doing every day tasks. By using different shades of white and grey clay I have also made them glow in the dark so the patterns on the beads are visible even in poor light.

 Although the individual Piggy bracelet is like a portrait of each guinea pig or pet I have decided upon another which somehow seems fairer to all my past pets. To create an almost charm bracelet with a single bead for each pet and to almost let them gather and build up naturally and over time. Already I am finding that when I do actually wear them I have to pull them off and fiddle with the smooth textures of the beads as I think and look at the revolving patterns of the beads.  And who knows ? maybe it can become a sort of addition to my guinea P performance like a " Influenced by" statement.

The start of my pet bracelett: Piggy ( guinea Pig),Rex ( guinea Pig), and solder ( fish)

Piggy

Ode To Past Pets

I couldn’t have started this project in a more perfect way if I had wanted, being an animal lover and in particular guinea pigs I have had many past pets 4 hamsters, 4 guinea pigs a rabbit and a few fairground fish which are no longer with us.  In fact I can’t remember a time I didn’t have a pet of some sort. My first 2 guinea pigs were the best pets ever and in a way were almost like mini dogs.  Though it may be when I got them I was at more of an age to appreciate them than the fair ground fish I got as a child and the rabbit I barely remember which my grand father had bought us for a ”surprise”. My first 2 guinea pigs were brothers and although I worried I had picked 2, which hated each other and were doomed to spend the rest of their hate filled lives together, they got on brilliantly. Once settled into their new home they would beg (squeal) for food mainly lettuce grumble when angry and give a good purr when happy.  They’d fall asleep on me as I handled them, they learnt their names and even how to tell me when they wanted to go back to their cage. They had also learnt when it was time to go back inside when they had had a long day of running around in their large outside enclosure. They even ran to me when they had scared themselves whilst exploring and had somehow managed to knock over a few pans from the kitchen cupboard they jumped into my arms trembling and would not move.

Needless to say, when they both died at a nice old age I decided to do something to remember them by. My first thought was to create wooden beads from the very chewed and nibbled branches of the plum tree, which they had loved to eat.

My first attempt at creating a " Piggy" bead still unfinished years later:

   I had wanted to start the project on the eve of their deaths so I waited for a year and then another…and another… until enough time passed that I realised it wasn’t possible especially since I had tried to get the branches out of the shed they had been stored in and realised with some alarm as I looked around at the junk laden shelves we had a case of wood worm. And so the project was halted again, as time has passed I have thought about this project every so often with the thinking of “ wouldn’t it be good” and whenever you start thinking like that you know that for whatever reason its something you are not going to get around to doing.  And so as time passed my thoughts evolved until I was ready to start the project and I opened my sketchbook…

The sketchbook couldn’t have been more perfect I’d bought it because of the picture of a guinea pig on the front wearing the hat of a rather famous comedian I’d bought it because I thought it was funny or at the very least quirky as did the boy on the till who also liked my guinea pig games calendar I had bought along with the book.  The sketchbook had remained sealed in a cellophane wrapper for a few months after I had bought it and I couldn’t help but smile at what was written in the book:

And so I have started my project in a timely and an eventful manner. 

Revenge on the bath giver

If I didn't know better-
I'd say it was deliberate.

There I was
rushing to work.

I pull on my shoes
pull the laces.

so my shoes don't go zoom.

Instead of that
my fisted hand flew up
and up.

SMACK
in the face.

You bit my lace
made me punch myself
in the face.

I can see your teeth,

Nibble,nibble, nibble

you ate it didn't you?

Your mad at me
I picked you up

and gave your bum
a little bit of a bath.

You didn't growl
but I know your mad.

I wasn't doing it just to be bad.

when summer comes
your poo - wet bum
will smell like a feast
of fruits and plums.

To the Mother flies, who will lay their eggs.
And the lava will hatch, and eat your legs.

I'm trying my best to keep you clear
so that future, will never come near.

My angry friend, you ate my shoe
you didn't need too.

Now I'm going to have to buy something new.