My work is based on the concept of ‘Shul’, a marking which remains after the thing that made it has passed through: a dry riverbed, a hollow an animal made in the grass. My interest is in how these traces are left on our bodies and memories. I use words, or a figure, or plant as a starting point and focus on growth and change.

I celebrate a moment in time. Starting points can be poetry, an overhead conversation or the landscape. I aim to make the moment visible and monumental. My work contemplates life and although direct carving techniques are used my work is not traditional. I use drawing and print-making to refine ideas, but like to carve directly on to the faces of the stone without certainty. I realise the form fully once the carving begins.

Interview in AD Magazine for The National Society of Education in Art and Design magazine Spring 2020

WORDS

Interview by Sophie Leach

SL: The influence of the environment threads throughout your work expressed in stone and pebbles, the forms that you sculpt or the words you inscribe. The words you select often reference spaces in the environment and, in the case of the Dew Bowls, their function too. How do you select your words or places described?

JS: I am always searching for words. I love words. I carry a notebook at all times and read every day. I read in the bath and so all my books grow huge with damp! I particularly love poetry and especially the words of Edward Thomas, Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver. They attend and celebrate the everyday; the small things. They find ways to notice place and its particular character. I am also very interested in and regularly use words from British and ,in particular, Sussex dialect, but also many words that were collected by Robert Macfarlane in his book Landmarks. My work celebrates the overlooked. I am led too by Shul, which Tsongkhapa, the Tibetan philosopher’ describes as ‘an impression after that which has made the impression has passed’. I make bowls to collect rain and dew, make candle pieces to light and turn dependent on season and carve the words to reflect this. Someone said to me recently that the work had a presence but that it also left a space around itself. This is the highest compliment I’ve ever had. I also collect words I hear in every day conversation and often these become the figurative carvings I make. I walk and talk and read. I sometimes do this with writers, but mostly on my own. I find words are the starting point for all my work. The visuals comes into play in relation to the words I read or hear. I keep a daily notebook that has phrases, words and the very occasional sketch in it. I fold over corners on my books, often underscore them and then transcribe into my notebook. Often re-reading leads to the beginning of my carved or printed work.