Commissioned for the Jerwood Art Fund Makers Open, Coping Mechanisms is a series of glass healing devices that draw on folklore, mythology and medical history to imagine ways to treat emotional ailments.

Using hand blown and cold worked techniques, glass elements are assembled to create complex multi-layered sculptures. For Coping Mechanisms the aesthetics of historic medical instruments have formed the basis of devices that we can use to heal ourselves, including: a pestle and mortar (to break up overwhelming thoughts), ear trumpets (to hear things left unsaid) and an anaesthetic inhaler (to numb grief). Feathers, mirrors and mark-making techniques reoccur throughout the work, referencing the symbolic presence of these in both fairytales and rituals across the globe, often as a way to connect to other worlds or see things differently.

In this work I explore the idea of ‘folk-futurism’, a term that I use to describe the meeting point of folklore with science fiction. By looking to the past and the ways that people have found to make sense of the world around them, I have re-imagined a process of healing for the future.

Text accompanies the objects, imagined as excerpts taken from a fairytale telling the story of the healing devices and their creator:

Once there was a girl who found herself in darkness. It gathered like storm clouds that broke over her in a thunderous torrent, leaving parts of her dull and worn and parts jagged and precarious.
The girl didn’t know how to escape the darkness and so she walked. Every day she walked and found comfort in the land and the light. As she walked she dreamed of objects that could help her, though they did not nor could not exist.
One day, as she walked a flash of black and white caught her eye. A magpie flew down with a beautiful feather in her beak. “Find these gifts as you walk” she said “and use them well. They will give you the strength you seek and transform your ideas into objects of hope and healing.”…

… The pigeons, watchers and witnesses of all around, instructed her to create three mirrors, each promising insight more valuable than a simple reflection. Mirrors to remove doubt and uncertainty, but to be used with caution
The first mirror showed her how others see her;
The second mirror showed each possible outcome of her decisions;
And the third mirror gave a true reflection of events, unclouded by the distortion of memory and the darkness that surrounded her...

… She sat in front of this object that she had crafted. The swans had promised she would find transformation but she only craved a path through the dark fog. As she unfurled each overwhelming thought and placed it into the shallow vessel, she began to find clarity; to pin threads down and separate the tangled strands. Some thoughts slipped away quickly like water while others remained: broken, fragmented and knowable...

… She placed her most treasured feather into the device, connected the mouthpiece and inhaled deeply. It was too much. The feelings of grief overwhelmed her, sinking deep into the pit of her stomach, as she was overcome by painful memories. But slowly, steadily, a blissful, smothering numbness began to wash over her. As she breathed gently in and out, the suffocating darkness
ebbed away and a wave of acceptance took its place...

… As she sat, huddled and adrift, watching the dark clouds race across the sky, feeling so far from the start of her journey, she wondered if she could still feel anything at all. Did she want to? The overwhelming darkness had a certain comfort. Next to her the precious hammer glinted with its enticing iridescence. One small tap to awaken her from this black cloud, a promise of life and feeling...

… As she walked, she thought back to the time before the darkness had imposed itself. There was so much that had been left unspoken and such a lot she had never asked about. She had missed so much when she had the chance, and now those that had been taken from her would not know the person she had become.
The crows’ gifts gleamed black amongst the others, promising connection, companionship and insight. As she whispered words into the tubes, they reflected and re-doubled; the symbols quivered and transformed; amplifying and reverberating her messages.
Then silence. She waited for an answer…