Flatworks: Papercut + Painting

All the Broken Pieces, paper and card, 2020

All the Light We Cannot See, lacquer and card, 2020

The July Interim exhibition was an opportunity to look again at the first big ceramic I made and smashed, for the purposes of producing UNBROKEN. 

It was good to revisit the most complicated break I ever repaired, and come across many familiar shapes and configurations in the process.  These two works on paper - a washi papercut and an urushi lacquer painting - were the result. 

During the process I thought about the idea that the gold of kintsugi is a metaphor for light, the Leonard Cohen lines reverberating in my earholes:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

Anthem, Leonard Cohen, 1992

I heard Leonard Cohen perform this at the Albert Hall in 2008 - having managed to find a single ticket two rows from the front when they released the house seats, just a fortnight before.

It is such a clear and joyful memory even thirteen years later, probably best summed up by the line that follows those above:

You can add up the parts
You won’t have the sum

I enjoyed this article by Cassie Werber in Quartz Magazine, that tells some of the story of the famous lines, and where Cohen’s (unconfirmed) thoughts about Anthem can be read.