I love the way the red leaps out from the green, and it would be a pleasant pastoral scene save for the insipid yellow biohazard sign in the background. I did take some photos without the sign which significantly changes the story of the image:
I think the sign gives the image rather sinister undertones. But this isn’t some eco-warrior propaganda warning about the impact of GM crops or somesuch (In fact, as it happens, I’m fairly pro-GM).
So what is the image about? Not only do I like the juxtaposition of the colours but I love the nonchalant feel of the figure revelling in the beauty around him/her. Maybe they haven’t seen the warning sign. Or perhaps they’ve seen it and ignored it. Sometimes to find and experience beauty we need to push beyond the place where people have warned us that it’s too dangerous to go. When all the fearful people around us tell us to stop because the next step is too risky it is an act of faith to move forward into terrain where we sense the promise of life and joy.
And so I wonder when is it courageous and when is it foolhardy to ignore the signs?
One of the things I love about my role is working with other artists. Keith Barley has contributed to a couple of exhibitions I’ve been involved with and I was thrilled that he agreed to create an installation piece to accompany Soul of Sheffield. Keith has taken one of the side rooms of the office space where we’re creating the city for his own piece Sole Cité.
He has layered up sand, coal and grit to form these columns. I was moved when I saw it for the first time; the piece feels both epic in scope as well as achingly fragile. The strata suggest aeons of time with human footprints only on the narrow final layer: the rock and deep history on which the city is built. At the same time I get the feeling that the piece could collapse at any moment, like sandcastles on the beach and as I draw close to it the childish urge to touch or crush the structures wells up from inside, it would be so easy to destroy them.
One of the aims of this whole project is to explore what it means to make sacred space in an ordinary place and what could be more ordinary than a sterile and anonymous office? This piece and the larger model of the city makes people gasp in wonder, and that sense of awe, amazement and surprise is for me an important aspect of the sacred.
Sacred space should also open up possibilities of experience, of different ways of seeing the world and being in the world. If we have the courage to engage with those possibilities then we will be changed by the experience. Art can do this in very powerful ways and with the Soul of Sheffield project I am excited by the prospect of opening up those possibilities not in church spaces or other places controlled by religious institutions but out in the world where ordinary people live and work.
It's far from easy though. The whole process has felt, like Keith's piece of work, both epic, as we touch the deep, soul-full places of creative community, and so fragile as we face practical and logistical issues that could bring the whole thing crashing down at any moment. I will share the story of some of those struggles in a later post.
I missed posting last month so here are the images for March and April.Seeing them together makes me think that they relate to each other. I wonder what stories you see...
There's so much to say about what's been going on at Soul of Sheffield, it's a remarkable experience. I will post some of my reflections on the process soon, for the meantime here are some photos showing what's been going on...
A few months back I was invited to contribute to an exhibition in North Wales that is being curated by my friend and fellow pioneer Gavin Mart. Here’s the link to the show, it will be well worth having a look if you can get there as Gav has gathered a stunning group of artists.
Each piece is based on an aspect of Jesus’ story running up to Easter. The part of the narrative that immediately leapt out at me was the passage where Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the dead. It resonates with some of the things I have been exploring in my own life recently and so the painting ended up being quite a personal piece.
For me this was also a joyful return to painting in the studio. The model posed for photographs as he wrestled with removing his t-shirt. I printed some of the photos onto acetate and, overlapping the images, projected them onto the canvas to get an idea of how the painting might work. It’s such a rich, multisensory experience applying thick oil paint to canvas and I owe much to my recent visit to a Gerhard Richter show for inspiration as to technique and style.
Here is the painting and below is the commentary I’ve sent along to the exhibition.
Oil on canvas 100cmx150cm
“Lazarus, come out!” Jesus calls to his friend lying in a grave.
For me this call has a clear resonance with the experience of gay and lesbian people – that often painful, messy struggle of coming out. Thus exposing a deep and essential aspect of yourself that no one else has seen which is ultimately liberating and feels like rising to a new life. The wider call is to us all to come out and to genuinely be the person we were made to be, so much of which we keep hidden. It takes courage to face the difficulty and vulnerability of that process.
At last we have begun work on the Soul of Sheffield community art project:
At over 50 metres across, the size of the space seemed overwhelming. The emptiness was bewildering as me and some of the other artists wandered around. Like a blank sheet of paper or empty canvas the familiar, fearful, feeling of facing the uphill struggle to create something from nothing welled up. But this time, rather than just gazing at a white sheet, we could walk around and inhabit the space that held the creative potential.
It was only after we’d laid down the circle of string to give an idea of where the city ring road might lie that we could begin to make sense of the space. Just a simple circle 8 metres in diameter but suddenly we could begin to envision what the emerging piece of art might look like and the feeling of fear gave way to the dizzy thrill of creation. By laying this one line we had made a decision and said ‘not this’ to the infinite other possibilities in the space: the first step on the road of creation.
There are other circles on the ground here too. You can see them if you look carefully at the photograph; rows of circles worn into the office-blue carpet from the desk chairs that used to spin and roll here every working day. This is challenging my view of the building. Initially I was hesitant to use what seems like a sterile and anonymous city office. But as I look deeper then the stories begin to reveal themselves.
These circles are the daily impressions of countless people and they hold the history of the place. Here people have been bored, have laughed, have flirted, have fallen in love, have been fired, have taken the emergency phone call from the hospital with bad news or good news. All of human life is here worn into the carpet like the grooves in the stone steps at an ancient cathedral. It’s so ordinary, what could be more ordinary than a bland and stained workplace floor, but the people who have filled the space, and who will fill the space again, make it extraordinary.
Thus my mistake is revealed, this isn’t an anonymous office space that could be swapped for a thousand other similar places across the country, after all. Just as the circle of string made something specific, something here and now to distinguish from the infinite, so the lives that flow through this building give it a history, give it a story. This story takes its place amongst the million other threads that weave to make the living community of the city and it’s these stories that we hope to discover and celebrate as we embark on the creative adventure.
For more information about the this project or to get involved then please visit www.soulofsheffield.com
This image feels apocalyptic to me. A great crowd amassed on a barren plain all looking to the angel for hope, but the angel hides his/her face; in shame? Or fear? Or sadness?
Perhaps the people need to stop looking for some kind of saviour to help them but look to themselves and to each other and then to get on with the hard task of living in loving community. Maybe that’s why the angel hides, out of love, because as long as it seems like hope and salvation will come from above then people will never realise that it is in fact in their midst.
Today is Ash Wednesday , the beginning of Lent, when Christian tradition remembers the time that Jesus spent in the wilderness:a barren place without hope, direction, sustenance or identity. Bereft of all of those things that we can draw comfort and strength from it’s in the wilderness that we find our true selves.
We finally have the space to begin work on the Soul of Sheffieldproject. And here it is…
Vast, empty, anonymous, like so many other spaces in Sheffield City Centre or in towns and cities across the country. When I describe to people where it is, at a prominent location on a busy road, they tend to rack their brains and then eventually have a dawning realisation of which building I mean. It’s as if this huge office block is invisible until you start to think about it.
I’ve found this to be true for so much of the city (and this really isn’t a criticism of Sheffield’s architecture) until I faced the prospect of actually building a model of the city for this project I never really saw what was there: strange corners, abandoned buildings, brutish concrete structures. I had wandered around the place that’s been home for half my life as if with my eyes closed.
And now we’re faced with the prospect of filling this wide open space with something creative and wonderful. The process of creating changes a space and gives it meaning – I would say that this makes it sacred space although you might use different language.
What meaning could be embodied in this creative act in such a place? I’m not sure, although I do have some ideas – like hazy shadows in the midst of the practical chaos of all the stuff that needs to be done to make this work (and I’m still not entirely positive that it will work). I have faith that meaning and value will emerge from the process of creation. When people talk, share their stories, work together to bring something to fruition that isn’t done to make money, or to make us famous or for a thousand other noble or ignoble ends – but work together simply to create for the sake of creation then I have faith that such a process changes us. It helps us to discover something new about ourselves, about how we relate to each other and to the world around us. This joyful, playful and creative process is the language of the soul.
I’m not sure what the journey will bring, although I’m confident that there will be times of frustration and confusion, and faced with this vast blank sheet I feel a fair degree of trepidation. Nevertheless I have faith that seeking beauty and community in one of the ordinary spaces in the city, the kind of place where so many people spend their working lives, will be time and effort well spent. So, whether the end result is stunning success or glorious failure (whatever either of those things may mean anyway) what does it matter? the journey’s the thing and I’m excited to find this adventure unfolding in the most ordinary and unlikely of places.
We would value as many and varied contributions from across the city as possible. If you live in or around Sheffield and would like to be involved in building the city either as an individual or as part of a group (no artistic experience necessary) then email me: rjstott@hotmail.co.uk
There’s not much I want to say about this image except that I think its one of my favourites of the series. I have my own idea about what’s happening between the two characters and what they might be saying to each other but that emerged after I had taken the photo. I would be interested in what you think the story is here…
Last Autumn I was interviewed about my work by the wonderful Anna Drew who is the media officer for the Methodist Church. The video has now been posted online and here it is for those who are interested. Anna really asked some great questions...
