Finding Inspiration
Finding out the inherent qualities of any given material, anything new is a challenge which is always inspiring.
Anna carries a notebook and pencil with her at all times. “Drawing is fundamental to everything” she says. “If you can draw something you can make it, if you can write something you can justify it.” She often involves words in her work in some way and explains “There’s a slight mystery about I do but I try to imbue everything with wit and humour and often in the writing give a clue about what the work is about. I try to inspire the observer to work it out for themselves.”
“Finding out the inherent qualities of any given material, anything new, is a challenge which is always inspiring” she says. This enthusiasm can be seen in the variety of objects that surround her in her studio – golden origami created from used mint cream wrappers, flotsam which she calls ‘nurdles’ picked up on a beach and a box of mushroom dyes collected as a member of the Scottish Fungus Bunch who attend international symposiums on fungi dye. She has also had a paper on mushroom paper published in a scientific journal.
In 2000 she created a woven tent from the Last Bale of Jute working as a ‘living exhibit’ for two months in the National Museum of Scotland. She still enjoys working with jute and says “It was humbling to be such a tiny part of that tremendous industry – a punctuation mark at the end of it.”
