Meadow Arts supports emerging artists by offering an
annual prize to a graduating student from Hereford College of Arts' Fine Art BA
(Hons) course. Our 2014 prize winner was Catherine Wynne-Paton, here she writes
about her current project, Lost Library.
Part 1
Q: What do you get when an artist gets together with a library, a local book and a well-known Welsh festival?
Q: What do you get when an artist gets together with a library, a local book and a well-known Welsh festival?
A: A lost
library!
LOST LIBRARY Border Country – a collaborative performance.
LOST LIBRARY Border Country – a collaborative performance.
LOST
LIBRARY Border Country is the first phase in a
project intending to raise the profile of libraries generally and Abergavenny
Library in particular and this part will culminate in performances during the
Monmouthshire & District National Eisteddfod.
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| Writing in The Print Shed's garden |
Back in the spring of 2015
I had the notion of ‘bathe in ignorance’ on my mind and it was something I had
to respond to – I wondered how I might Bathe in my own ignorance? Naturally
(for me) I headed to my local library to find the biggest dictionary they had
and chose a few pages to work with and from those pages I noted the words I
didn’t understand. This gave me 254 words, which I projected through paper and
later black plastic by pricking the words into the material in dot form. I then
made the black plastic into a tepee-like tent and, luckily in May we had
beautifully strong sunshine and once inside I had the form of the words
projected onto me and anything within the tent. In the summer I began painting,
acrylic on canvas – the starting point being one of the words, working
intuitively. September found me exhibiting my work at a solo show at The Print
Shed in Madley (www.theprintshed.net) and as part of the show worked with the
grass as my medium, this time using black plastic sheeting to write a few of
the words across Jill Barnaby’s garden there. I am currently in the middle of
painting all 254 words onto mini calico covered boards, picking words out of a
bag.
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| Abergavenny Library |
Around this time, I began
thinking about the positive impact libraries have on lives. At times in my life
I have used the library a lot, at others, not so much. One way I have used the
library – to find unknown words – has fed my curiosity in a way that simply
wouldn’t have happened as easily without the library nearby. I wanted to find a
way to bring attention to the library, discussions around the reduction of
library services often seem so, well, quiet! Not just write about it in a blog,
or another article in a newspaper, how could I make the library (and thoughts
of libraries closing, opening hours reducing and staffing levels being
squeezed) jump off the page and into life? Words and text are a pivot for much
of my work and the possibility of turning text into movement has been forefront
of my mind throughout this quest focussed on libraries (for their multi-faceted
benefit to our society, including financial, which they don’t receive royalties
for!)
Performances are on mornings of 29, 30 July, 2, 3,4,5 and 6 August
between Abergavenny Library in Baker Street and the Eisteddfod site at Castle
Meadows.
Sponsored by Friends of Abergavenny Library
Services and The Library of Wales.
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