Tobacco and Roses

A memento mori to my mother, housed in a Victorian cash box.

Created shortly after my mother's death, Tobacco and Roses was my first assemblage work and marked the beginning of a way of working that continues through much of my practice today.

Each compartment contains a small offering drawn from memory and mourning. A powder compact still carries traces of her scent. Handmade rose beads were formed from the petals of her funeral flowers. Cigarette packets and tobacco references acknowledge the habit that shaped much of her life. An altered book holds fragments from her diaries, preserving a few pages from more than forty years of written thoughts.

Letters from my father, photographs, pressed flowers, treasured textiles and collected objects sit alongside deeply personal keepsakes. Together they form a portrait assembled not through chronology, but through memory.

Like grief itself, the work moves between tenderness and loss, love and absence. The roses speak of devotion. The tobacco speaks of mortality. Between them lies a life remembered.

'Roses'

These 'Peace' roses were from the last Mothers Day bouquet. I have printed leaves with snippets of love letters, to intermingle with the roses.

'Tobacco'

Altered cigarette boxes, wrapped in layers of tissue and fabric, hold a love letter from my father, printed leaves and a solitary cigarette bearing my mother's lipstick mark. Over sixty years she smoked an estimated five million cigarettes.

Message Bowl

outside: snippets of love letters from my dad digitally printed onto cream paper and verses from the prayer book my mum had been given as a child.

inside: a shell with a snippet from mum's prayer book, another has a photograph of mum as a young woman.

Textile Bowl

outside: pieces of organza, silk and velvet (some had been printed on) all stitched with metalic threads and woven with hand died ostrich feathers.

inside: buttons, shells, stamps, feathers, petals and printed leaves etc woven into the stitches in memory of my mum's passion of collecting.

Altered Book

Above detail: Altered Book - showing health warning on foredge, inside

Textile Rose

Above: 'Textile Rose' - showing my mums love of threads and textiles - organzas, silks and velvets - all rich with texture and meaning, all delicate and fragile.

Mums Diary

Above: Altered Book - layers of pressed flowers, their garden was a very important part of my parents life together

Altered Book

Above: Altered Book - layers of pressed flowers, their garden was a very important part of my parents life together

'Powder Compact'

When I opened my mums powder compact, and took the lid off her lipstick they still smelt of her.

Altered Book

Inside the front cover - a love note from my dad on the left - and a photo of my mum on the right.

Victorian Cash Box

closed box with double lock

Victorian Cash Box

open, showing the full contents

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