Objects of Meaning

My mum has been a seamstress for over 40 years.  She’s made everything from our childhood clothes, to costumes for screen, stage and theatre. She was also self taught and I am so proud of her.

My brother and I sporting handmade matching wedding outfits with our mum in 1988

She always worked from the kitchen table late into the night: she’d swiftly and skilfully sail scissors through sequins and silks, sewing well into the early hours most nights. In fact some of my most comforting memories from childhood were the sounds of her sewing machine as I was drifting off to sleep. If it were to stop, I would wander onto the landing, sleepily and call out: ‘Mummy are you still there?”.

A few years ago I inherited her first ever sewing machine. I love sewing with this machine: It’s slow, clunky and more often than not temperamental, but it makes time rewind when I press my foot against the pedal and I simply adore it.

My Mums (and now my) sewing machine.

I always say that the main element of my work is visual storytelling - the threads of our lives, the stories, events and objects that connect us to our memories. So the fact that I can create artwork using the very sewing machine that brings back so many wonderful memories of my mother and childhood means a lot to me.

Call it coincidence or fate, but I now too work through the night using this machine. When Monty is finally asleep after a long and tiring day; I get going with my ‘work day’. I hope someday he will recall with fondness the memories which my work and life as an artist mother leaves on him.

Working into the night