Fiona Meakin Designs - Draw With Fi

My Grandad took up ceramic painting during his retirement. He used to go to classes at a local school where he would decorate plates and tiles. He used a back bedroom in my Grandma and Grandad's house as his studio and me and my sisters and cousins would learn how to paint onto the ceramics, then he would take them to his class and get them fired for us. He used all sorts of imagery as inspiration, we bought him a book about Mabel Lucy Atwell for one Christmas which I think is where he has taken the image of the boy with the icecream above. My favourite of his creations is the terracotta head that he sculpted at a class. I think this may have been informed by his travels as a nurse during the second world war. I recently found a piece of writing about his retirement that he had penned for either me or one of my sisters to help us with a homework task.

Two significant points from Joshua Glen's text, firstly quiddity and secondly collecting: Quiddity = The Essence of a Thing (In the text 'Taking Things Seriously,' by Joshua Glen he describes quiddity as a scholastic term meaning the essence of a thing. " that which differentiates a thing from other things." p16 "As for Heideggerians, existentialists, and phenomenologists, although they may talk excitedly of the 'thingness of things,' they always seem less interested in particular things than in exposing some supposedly concealed truth about being , by making a study of 'the thing.' " p16 Collecting "Walter Benjamin once claimed, in his essay 'Unpacking My Library,' that the act of collecting is one of conferring upon an object a value that derives not from the marketplace but from its place within the collection. The downside of collecting, however, is that it doesn't confer unique value on any one object. p12 (Takin...

...I even found teeth! Unfolding before my eyes was a macabre hoard of sad, lonely things. Sads. They no longer had a function but had a very specific resting place and I was the archaeologist .

Quiddity Findings ( Thursday 14/08/08) Three F's: Figurines, Fossils, Fetish. This drive to collect is a family trait. Owls, teaspoons, buses, badges... Was I disappointed? Having set myself a day to rediscover objects and stuck to it, I was left feeling quite disturbed. Uprooting items that have been tucked away for years left me with an uneasy feeling. Everything was ugly. A Steiff hedgehog coverered in mould, a forlorn teddy bear whose last scraps of fur were held together by netting that left it naked and vulnerable. A faded porcelain caterpilar hand painted by me c. 1995. If only I could find the life size porcelain Pug dog whose gritty grey paint still looked tacky. I even found teeth! Unfolding before my eyes was a macabre hoard of sad, lonely things. Sads. They no longer had a function but had a very specific resting place and I was the archaeologist. The task had become a mammoth tidying my room session in a room that has not been used as my bedroom for years. Some items ...

Figurines. It was very strange. Having set myself a day to rediscover objects (and stuck to it!) I was left feeling quite disturbed. Uprooting items that have been tucked away for years left me with an uneasy feeling. This task became a mammoth (tidying my room) session, in a room that has not been used as a bedroom, by me, for years. Many items have devalued emotionally whilst others have gained emotional significance. I am more and more interested with the origins of these objects. Where were they produced? How did I come to own them?

Objects chosen to work from are the remnants of a relationship and a place, once visited, that exists only in my memory, both are only recalled from my perspective. The work as a whole is restricted by the fact that all work is based upon objects that I will rediscover in my childhood bedroom on Thursday 14th August 2008.

Getting started again after a while pondering new ideas and looking for a starting point. It seems that the computer is an ever increasing 'studio' for my thoughts and ideas because I am able to access information easily and it only takes up virtual room...