David Neale’s Colour Fold series of painted metal on canvas remind me of mountainscapes, icebergs and handfulls of sea glass. They’re simple, crudely made, and so very lovely. I love his chalky colour combinations and the texture in the metal. There’s a feeling of rough cut gemstones to the work, which given Neale’s life long commitment to goldsmithery and jewellery design makes sense. It’s always so interesting to see how an artist manifests from one medium to another and these artworks are similar to his jewellery in that they have a warm, organic and tactile feel, but the overall impression is decidedly different. How exciting.

For several years my family has travelled to a small island on the Gulf Coast side of Florida for beach walks and grouper sandwiches. The sand there feels like pastry flour and is laced with a million shells from cockles and lightening whelks to rough scallops and calico clams. If you’re really lucky, you may even find a sand dollar or a dried-up starfish. Shelling takes time and patience. My largest shells are from Irene’s house. All the best shells wash up on her little beach. Irene and my Mum have been fiends since childhood and no visit to Anna Maria is complete without a drive over the bridge to her weathered clapboard on Longboat Key. Most of the shells have some imperfection –– a small crack, a chip or some discolouration –– but they’re still so beautiful. This time, I found two large Southern Quahogs, chalky white with rough lines on the outside, and a fighting conch (the ones with the jagged spires at the top). I also brought home a bag of broken seashells; teeny, tiny fragments that I’ll piece together to make something whole. Eventually, I hope to take shells collected over many years and mount them on some lovely fabric, but in the meantime, they live in pockets and drawers and inside my shoes.

As a fellow lifelong stone collector, I am drawn to Avery Gregory’s beautiful assemblages of found stones. In her “stone studies” she curates them by size, colour and shape drawing one’s eye both to individual stones, and the collection as a whole. There is so much beautiful detail in the stones she selects; lines, holes, speckles and swirls. Gregory, who lives in Western United States, sources stones from all over the country. “I pick up the same stones in different iterations over and over and over again. The natural world is inherently entropic and that is deeply comforting to me: that the planet unconsciously creates these little polished bits of itself with no care as to how they look or where they end up or any knowledge that they exist. Enviable detachment.”

When I’m overwhelmed my brain feels like a waterlogged sponge. We all know what it’s like to wipe down a counter with a sponge that needs to be wrung out. It can’t absorb spills and water seeps everywhere. What’s good about sponges though is that they have an amazing ability to withstand compression and bending. We all have our own ways of “wringing out the sponge.” It’s rare to achieve that perfect state-of-mind where we’re strong and springy and confidently in control of what we do and don’t absorb. I’m learning to savour those moments, knowing that they are transient. Just as transient as the overwhelmed ones.

Molly Hatch creates stunning installations of handmade plates adorned with designs that reference periods and paintings from the history of art. From 15th century Dutch still life paintings to the lithographs of William Saville-Kent, Hatch looks to fine art and textiles and ceramics for inspiration. Her progress series, made during the Covid 19 Pandemic, is inspired by 18th Century Indian weaving while her beautiful mille fleur series pays homage to a series of tapestries made in the South Netherlands in the early 15th Century. The plates are illustrated with the whole piece in mind, and yet each one stands alone.

Shelagh Wilson’s paintings are so richly atmospheric. She captures a mood. “My paintings and drawings are primarily an emotional response to a subject rather than what I see,” says the Brighton based artist. “When I work, I become absorbed in memories –– of colours, of pale suns, snow, mist and soft rain, plants, trees, bogs, birds, fields full of wildlife –– all things sown deep in my sub-conscious from my Irish childhood.” Her landscape series is so intensely saturated with colour and emotion that one might actually feel that they’re seeing through Wilson’s mind’s eye. Tobacco leaves, bruised skies and migrating birds over frigid waters.