A Journey into Suspended Wonder
There are moments in the creative life when one stumbles upon something that feels less like discovery and more like remembrance, as though the soul has always known this truth, waiting patiently for the hands to catch up with the heart’s deeper knowing. Such was my encounter with Held, a fabric sculpture that emerged not from careful planning but from that mysterious place where materials whisper their secrets to those willing to listen.
The Dance of Departure
To venture into three-dimensional work after years of painting felt rather like stepping through a wardrobe into an entirely different country—one where the familiar rules of surface and pigment gave way to the strange physics of space and suspension. The organza and muslin called to me with their gossamer voices, speaking of possibilities I had never before considered. Here was fabric that could hold light the way water holds reflections, creating depths that seemed to breathe with their own quiet life.
The blue plastic film, cascading from ceiling to floor like some ethereal waterfall, became my unexpected collaborator. In its translucent folds, I glimpsed something of what the mystics might call the “thin places”—those moments where the visible and invisible worlds seem to touch. The transparency reminded me of those precious watercolour washes where pigment and water dance together in perfect surrender, each yielding to the other’s nature while creating something neither could achieve alone.
The Alchemy of Texture
Working with mod rock and felting wool to create the textured globe felt like a return to some ancient craft—the kind of making that connects us to the first humans who ever pressed clay between their fingers or wove grass into baskets. Each layer built upon the last, creating not merely surface decoration, but a kind of archaeological record of the creative process itself. The globe emerged slowly, like a planet forming in the darkness of space, gathering substance and meaning with each careful addition.
I found myself painting with fabric itself, using the materials as both brush and pigment. The layering of colour and translucency became a meditation on how beauty often emerges not from single, bold gestures, but from the patient accumulation of subtle choices—each layer adding its voice to a growing chorus of visual harmony.
Held – 2024
Fabric Sculpture. Organza, cotton muslin, paper, wire, mod roc, felting wool, wooden battens, nylon wire
290 x 245 x 156 cm
Choreography in Three Dimensions
Perhaps it was inevitable that my dance training would assert itself in this new medium. As I worked with the suspended materials, I could sense the ghost of choreography moving through the space—the way fabric might part to allow a dancer’s passage, the dramatic tension between weight and weightlessness, the poetry of bodies moving through air made visible by flowing cloth.
The theatre of it all delighted me. Here was a set design that existed for its own sake, creating atmosphere and mood without the need for actors or narrative. The blue plastic film became both curtain and stage, defining space while remaining permeable, creating boundaries that invited crossing rather than forbidding it.
The Paradox of Being Held
There is something profoundly moving about the title Held—a word that carries within it both security and restraint, both embrace and suspension. The globe, cradled in its web of translucent material, speaks to our deepest longings for support and connection. Yet it also suggests the delicate balance required for any creative work to exist—held aloft by invisible forces, suspended between earth and sky, existing in that liminal space where art lives and breathes.
In creating this piece, I discovered that working in three dimensions is not simply about adding depth to flat surfaces, but about entering into conversation with space itself. The air around the sculpture becomes as important as the materials within it. Light moves differently here, creating shadows and reflections that shift with the viewer’s position, making each encounter with the work a unique experience.
The Continuing Journey
Held has taught me that departure—whether from familiar mediums, comfortable techniques, or well-worn creative paths—is not abandonment but expansion. Like Aslan’s country, which was always larger and more wonderful than the Narnia the children thought they knew, the realm of artistic possibility stretches far beyond what we can initially perceive.
The textured globe continues to hang in its blue cocoon, a reminder that sometimes the most profound discoveries come not from forcing our way forward, but from allowing ourselves to be held by materials, by process, by the mysterious forces that guide creative work when we have the courage to trust them.
In this suspended world of organza and light, I have found not just a new medium, but a new way of seeing—one that recognises the sacred in the translucent, the eternal in the ephemeral, and the profound in the perfectly, beautifully held.