A slight movement of breath
this vessel is a body,
earth turned, season drifted
a shapeshifter comfortable
in its own lustred skin
until
below the glost an exhalation –
an impression becomes a crease
becomes a lacework of cracks
mapped across the carapace
until
this body becomes a vessel
and hope a quiet
act of transformation
Metamorphosis
Our world relies on insects. As Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson writes in her book Extraordinary Insects, they “are nature’s little cogs that make the world go round.” They are also extraordinarily beautiful when seen in the microscopic detail of Levon Biss’s photographic book Microsculpture.
These gorgeous images, combined with a shared love of sculptural form, provided particular inspiration for our work. We wanted to find out if we could emulate that shimmering, textural world through our own chosen media – linoprinting and ceramics. Cue a lot of messing about with shapes and surfaces, printing inks and glazes.
But then how to weave a thread between seemingly disparate things – insects, metamorphosis, different artforms and the breath that lies behind the etymology for ‘inspiration’? The answer, of course, lay in poetry.
Lisa Andrews and Steve Cook