Look to the trees

I became a Crisis member, let's start with that, back in February. And then I got a message out of the blue, asking if I'd be interested in a project that was poetry, written word and photography. I’m actually a jeweller (I went to Royal College of Art years ago, that’s been my career) and I wasn’t sure if I’d be eligible for the project, as I’m not a writer or photographer, but they said by all means come along.

In principle, my part of the project was about the History of Science Museum, and the fact that I was trying to find my way (and am still and will find my way) through Oxford with all its buildings, its money, its tourism. It's about a journey where you haven't got a yardstick, you don't know north, south or east, west. You're just trying to find your way. The first page of it, that photograph of a shadow, I took it because there's an old Roman road near where I live. The sun comes up and goes down directly on that road and it casts the most amazing shadows. There was a real sense of the underbelly of Oxford that came out of that project as well. You've got all that wealth, all that academic ambition, you've got all that right in your face, and then you've got homelessness under your nose. Every city's got homelessness, but Oxford is quite a small place. It’s stark. It isn’t diluted as you would see in bigger cities. I wanted to bring these things to the surface, but not be overt about it.

There were quite a lot of quotes I could have used in the project. But a word that I didn't use was tragen. My second language is Greek, it's a bit rusty, but I've got a real interest in languages. Tragen is German. It means 'to wear', but it also means 'to carry.’ The jewellery I make is not about gold and diamonds, it's about us, it's about people, it's about what we carry with us, the layers we experience and how they form us. So tragen is really important to me, and it surely is now, because I'm living out of a suitcase. I'm almost homeless, not quite. With all the anxiety and the baggage that's come with this, I'm still carrying that, and I will do for a long time to come I suspect. But it's learning to manage it and handle it, and that's where this project was so important.

Being displaced, because that is I suppose the polite way of putting it, it's been such a scary time but it's equally made me think in different ways. When I was younger my mum said to me, don't you ever judge a book by its cover. This can happen to anyone. She'd been meeting all sorts of people who were on the streets, in skip, squatting, wherever. They'd been high-powered businessmen, they’d been all walks of life. And I remember another time, when I was leaving the Royal College of Art, I bought a Big Issue on the way to the bus. I felt a deep, visceral fear that this could happen to me, and all these years later, this is where I am. But I've followed my practice, and I will re-establish myself, there's no question about that. My tools, which would usually be my go-to, are in storage. So this project has made me think in different ways and find other resources. It's still about materials though, like the map I included, which has little bits cut away and inlaid with gold. The little gold places are the places I go for peace. The old covered market, the parks, and a few spots near the river. They’re my treasured places. And they also go back historically. I haven't necessarily been to all of them, but I know that within Oxford, with all the chaos and the turmoil that's going on in my mind, there are special places to be found.

The opening night for the project was a lovely evening. There was a real support amongst the group for each other. What I said was very, very short, but one of the group came up to me afterwards and gave me the biggest hug. I’ve forged important connections during this project, and that night was special. It was intimate. It's a small space, and friends and family had come along. We're all meeting up again this afternoon to celebrate the fact that the book's now in the gallery.  That book really is this wonderful mix and match of perspectives and stories.

But the project wasn’t always easy. It’s safe to say, that I've not been in a good place. And as a creative person, the first thing that gets beaten over the head and wiped out when you’re going through shit is your creativity. I'm running from domestic abuse, let's put it that way. And I'm busy trying to apply for criminal compensation. It's all empirical, so they take into account injuries and so forth, but what they don't take into account or acknowledges is the mental, spiritual and emotional impact. It's massive. And that's why this project really was just so important to me.

The project meant that once a week, I carved out time to be the person I actually am, albeit I was working in a different format. I've met people I wouldn't have met, which has been really rich, and it's put me back in touch with what I do. And what I do doesn't necessarily make vast money on this planet, it really doesn't. And while my tools are in storage, I’ve got my sketchbooks, I’ve got my paint brushes and I've got my dad's pencils. My dad was a graphic designer, and that really came through in this project. It's one of those things that’s suddenly there in front of you and you realise, whoa! Dad, I'm still using your pencils all these years down the line. I haven't sharpened them because you sharpened them, and it's a signature. It's all inside me. My creativity hasn't gone away.

I saw an old friend of mine last night, she's the one that first brought me to Crisis. We were talking about this project and she said, you got to get your work out there again. But I've realised that actually you can't all sustain a 'career', not an artistic career, not unless you've got vast amounts of money behind you and you're not worried about anything. This is actually about living, and my work is about living, it's about people, so it'll come. But this project's really helped me on my way with that because it's made me think an awful lot about what's been before and about what's coming next. We don't know what's coming up, none of us do, so it's actually a reverse of what we say. It’s about looking to the trees, not the forest. The rawness of the position I'm in means I’m not looking to the past with nostalgia, but looking to realise what I've done in my life, and to hold it with me, not hold it as in control it, far from it, but to know that I’m the person I am through all I've done.