From ‘Time and Place’ published by Little Toller

Statement by Alexandra Harris

From her home in Brighton, Jo Sweeting sets out on walks over the downs and into the Weald the other side, where the land changes from high, smooth, open chalk to clay and forest – or what’s left of forest. For centuries when the woods were deep and the churned lanes impassable, the area was known as the ‘wild’. The four heads of Sweeting’s calendar are emblems and memories of the seasons in this place. Emphatically square, each print suggests a four-sided year. The seasons face each other in pairs, watching, replying, reminiscent of the seasons that watch and reply to each other in medieval part-songs, summer and winter forming antiphonal music.

Helmet–like, hermetic, the head-forms suggest the intricately incised metal of ancient armour. But look again, and what appears may not be a hard, protective surface but an interior topography. Are we looking into the minds of the seasons themselves? Or into the mind of a responsive human being, registering the seasons around her, or dreaming them? This brain’s anatomy includes a cerebrum of skies, and botanical lobes. Paths run across it like blood vessels, or wrinkles on a face. Then, for a moment, the controlling idea of the head recedes, and we have a portion of mapped ground: we are looking down on fields and ditches. Cutting into wood, sweeting carves out landscapes, thinking as she does so of how the land itself is carved by feet, ploughs, and rivers.

Sweeting is a specialist letter carver. She chisels words into Caen stone, Portland stone, Ancaster from Lincolnshire and Polyphant from Cornwall. Her lapidary art makes words tangible, and makes them last. The letterforms of the Calendar of the Sussex Wild suggest runes and, carved at the four edges of each print, they recall the notches of the primstavs and Staffordshire clogs. In place of saints’ days, Sweeting marks out the natural life of the Weald. In spring: Callow woods on the verge of budding. In autumn: Kex for the old East Sussex word for land sharp with flints, ‘Gratten for the stubble fields, scratchy and bristling.

‘CALENDAR OF THE SUSSEX WILD’

SUSSEX DIALECT INFORMATION

The ‘Calendar of the Sussex Wild’ series of woodcuts was commissioned by Common Ground in response to ‘place’. Sussex is my ‘place’. The Weald of Sussex is always spoken of as ‘The Wild’ by the people who live in the Downs, who by the same rule are called ‘The Wild People’. This is a year of the ‘Wild’ on the Downs where I live.

SPRING – ‘CALLOW SHUL HEAD’

Callow – to bud

Cats Tails – male blossom of hazel

Carfax – a place where four roads meet

Crowsfoot – the buttercup

Gagy – showery

Gull – male blossom of willow

Shay – a faint ray of light

Bethwine – the wild clematis

Whiffle – wind coming in gusts

SUMMER – ‘COMBE SHUL HEAD’

Agarves – May berries

Twitten – a narrow path between walls or hedges

Clavels – separate corns in an ear of wheat

Knap – top of a hill

Combe – a hollow in the Downs

Bostal – a steep path up a hill in the Downs

Marestails – streaky white clouds said to indicate wind

Ore – seaweeds washed on shore by the tides

Swallocky – stormy clouds produced in hot weather

Cole – sea kale

AUTUMN – ‘KEX SHUL HEAD’

Kex – dry hollow stalks of umbellifers

Haitchy – misty

Wuts – oats

Hagtrack – coarse green grass circles on the Downs

Starky – flinty

Print-Moonlight – very clear moonlight/ clear enough to read by

Gratten – a stubble field

Hogarves – hawthorn berries

WINTER – ‘SHAW SHUL HEAD’

Bleat – cold, cutting wind

Winter-Proud – cold

Clung – cold and damp

Sniggler – a slight frost

Tempesty – a gale of wind

Hanger – a hanging wood on a hillside

Shaw – a small hanging wood

Hollards – dead branches of trees

All definitions and dialect are taken from ‘A Sussex Guide A dictionary of The Sussex Dialect’ published by Snake River Press and was adapted from the writings of the Reverend W.D Parish.

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‘The People of the Wild’

Woodcut information

Interview for Double Dagger 3

Broadsheet printed and published by Pat Randle and Nick Loaring

Graphical works carved into wood and stone by hand are the hallmarks of Jo Sweeting, a letter carver, sculptor and printmaker who draws much of her inspiration from her home on the Sussex coast.

Nick Loaring catches up with Jo to talk lettering, carving and our familiar friend, Neuland.

Nick : I came to your work through your printed ‘heads’. I was struck by how graphic they were – but woodcarving is only one part of your work, what are the different challenges with cutting into stone and wood?

Jo : I never carve wood in the round and only use it as a printing block or occasionally used for lettering on but only at large scale. It obviously has a grain and requires the use of many tools by comparison to stone. Laying out woodcarving chisels and their myriad of blades for cutting round corners seems rather like bell ringing to me!

The sound of carving wood is a delight and the Japanese wood ply I I just for my woodblock is lovely to cut. It does have a grain and I always use this as my starting point for my work.

Before I begin any design I will trace and cut the grain onto the block so that it is printed and preserves the history of the wood in the print. This is important to me. I think my work is seen as graphic and strong because it is black and white and the marks I choose to make are quite strident. I believe this is from working on stone, which requires a ‘brave’ approach as you can’t replace anything that is removed. I  think I work freely on the wood and without fear as it seems so much easier and quicker to work than stone. Even when printing at 1 metre square, using wood and paper and it ease of manoeuvre is a delight compared with stone! I never draw out a design onto the word and most of my work begins with words as a starting point. I try to work instinctively on the block and adapt the designs I work across the surface. I feel very confident in the carving – whether in wood or stone- and it comes down to my training in lettercarving.

Full article available via Double Dagger @doubledaggerz

Double Dagger is is cast in hot-metal type at the Whittington Press

I have been invited to make a response to Gilbert White book ‘The Natural History of Selbourne’. It is a woodcut print called ‘Hybernaculum Head’ and its starting point was Whites’ fascination with hybernation and migration.