Sister Anthony
"I come from a family where my parents just loved working with their hands and taught us as soon as we were able to take it in. My father was a civil servant but in his spare time grew our vegetables, mended our shoes, did most of the painting and odd jobs around our house. He had a book he got for half a crown in Woolworths and he tried his hand at simple electrical repairs and blew many a fuse on us! My mother, with a few of her friends, went to night classes in all kinds of crafts and we were taught, or introduced to each craft. Her idea was to give us a working knowledge of as many things as possible and if we wanted to develop any of them later on, we'd know how to go about it.So between her and her friends, we were introduced to rushwork, canework, pokerwork, raffia, wax flowers modelled onto beech branches, leatherwork, lampshades etc. They also cured sheepskins. I remember once fishing a dead mouse out of the dustbin, skinning it and curing the skin with salt. We were encouraged to have enquiring minds and use our ingenuity.
My mother first gave me a needle and thread when I was three - just to get me out from under her feet. I had a sunhat with a floppy brim and the brim was falling off, and she put me sitting down with a big darning needle and thread and told me to mend my hat. A neighbour came running in to tell my mother the child had a needle in her hand and my mother just said, "Yes, I gave it to her. She's mending her hat" and went back to the kitchen to enjoy the joke to herself!
We also learned about sound, and had various mouthorgans, jewsharps, tin whistles etc. Once we discovered that if you took the stalk off a dandelion you would blow through it and get a musical note. Then we found that different stalks had different notes, so we kept searching till we had an octave of notes and then sat our friends around in a semi-circle and played tunes by pointing to the person who had the note you needed and getting them to play their note.
My mother had taught me to knit, sew, embroider and do all kinds of fancy needlework. She had me doing drawn threadwork when I was eight. We were jacks of nearly all trades and loved it. So that's where I come from, and the Lord only knows where I'm going! I have an open mind…..!"
When this artist was introduced to pottery she very quickly discovered her real métier. There is no need for her to travel to exotic places for inspiration; she has found it in her everyday surroundings, the convent. Her stoneware sculptures are all studies of her colleagues (and herself) going about their daily routine of prayer, work and occasional leisure time.
These are not "holy statues", rather they are keenly observed studies of the sisters in their community, highly detailed, very funny. These are happy fulfilled women who obviously enjoy life - none more so perhaps than our elderly nun from the West of Ireland.
HEART TO HAND |
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