The Shackled Breath (or The drift of last winter's ash)

In keeping with my 'vessels' series, this work is a tiny foray into the world of assemblage art. Constructed from objects found around my home and studio - a discarded vase from my bathroom, ash from my winter stove, a clear plastic lid from the kitchen recycling and a picture of the moon cut from an old encyclopedia and sourced from my drawers of collage materials and ephemera.

Just a thought one Winter's morning while contemplating all that we hold, all that is poetic and inexpressible within ourselves and within the world. How the sacred is bound so intrinsically with that which we often overlook, discard, dismiss, destroy even. Held in our hand, can we tell what ash once was? A forest, a being (a parent or child), a home, a fire to keep us warm, a love to kindle joy in our soul. Someone told me once, often actually, that I feel things too deeply. and I then wrestled with this observation. That is intrinsic to my nature, just as this ash is more than dust.

I often think about objects in the context of artefacts; how the very nature of our investigation changes their nature and, yet, they may remain unaltered by our observation. If I place this ash in a vase, on a shelf, it could remain this way for a thousand years and what would it tell us? Would it convey my actions as I lit a fire, my dreams and hopes as I kindled its flames, my feelings of despair as I struggled with the green wood or the cost of its purchase. Would it tell the story of the hands that lit it.... and beyond that, what of the wood that had fallen, the trees that gave their life, the forest consumed.

The moon is an artefact of the Earth, a space rock, circling us in her elliptical orbit. We observe her but she does not observe us. The lid acts as a barrier between the ash and the paper, two artefacts formed from trees. Eventually, it will all disintegrate, even the plastic, the metal frame, the glass of the vase... and become dust.

The title is taken from one of my Empty Kingdom poems: Elegy of a Dead Bird.