‘The Twilight Covenant, And The Promise Of Home’
It has been nine long months since I last released a new Wonderland photo. I can hardly believe it as I write these words, but I am now finally free. On the twenty-ninth of December I left a decade of my career in fashion design behind, to follow my heart and step into the unknown territory of becoming an artist full time. I am a nervous mix of excitement, anticipation and quiet terror over what I have done, but in my heart I have no regrets. Things had reached a point where I simply couldn’t carry on, and trying to balance creating the project while coping with a demanding job had become impossible and was also making me seriously ill.
So here I am, on the other side of what has been one of the hardest decisions of my life, and only time will tell if it was brilliance or madness on my part. Many things affected my choice, but back in April last year I had a chance meeting with an art curator whose words of advice heavily influenced the new direction I have taken with both my life and Wonderland. We met at point where I had naïvely thought leaving my job was imminent and that my work was strong enough to support myself. We spent three hours together in a hotel lobby, where he gently tore away every preconception I had about the art world. It was a wake- up call like no other and one that I will remain deeply grateful for, despite how hard it was to hear. Above all, he was from an older generation where the circus of the Internet’s constant demands to create work quickly for the gratification of others was irrelevant. He thought my work had great promise but questioned if it was my best. He told me to slow down, focus, and asked what I would be truly capable of if I pushed myself to my absolute limit. What would happen if I made fewer pieces, and instead invested all my time and energy into a singular vision with no compromises?
This is the reason behind my radio silence. I have taken every last word of his advice and spent nine months privately producing a handful of works that I feel are my very best. It has been extremely difficult not showing anyone what I have been up to, and even harder pondering piles of unedited shoots, constantly having to go through the development of one character into the next, without the satisfaction of releasing anything online. I have watched other photographers race ahead with their projects and felt isolated and panicked that no one would remember Wonderland when it returned. I have worked almost completely alone, apart from shoot days and the occasional help from Elbie, but despite all of this I am very glad I have gone through the process. I have learned a huge amount about being ruthlessly selective and balancing a body of work across a large number of shoots. For the first time ever I have found myself seeing Wonderland as a whole: contemplating the colour, scale and perspective of the new work alongside what I had already achieved with the previous pieces. I have also learned a very hard lesson about knowing my limits, as once again I made myself extremely unwell with stress and exhaustion, and it has taken months to finally get better.
So before I go any further I should point out this entry is enormous as it took over 5 months to develop The White Queen pictures. It was the biggest challenge I have ever taken on, but I am so thrilled and proud of the results.
The concept of the White Queen pictures started over a year ago when I had an extremely vivid dream during the early stages of Wonderland. The vision was exactly how ‘The Queen’s Armada’ now looks, and I still find it quite overwhelming to think about how much I went through in order to re-create it so accurately. Wonderland is rooted in the stories my mother read to me as a child, and one of the most unusual illustrated books I can remember from our time together was The Kingdom Under the Sea written by Joan Aiken.
Back in the winter of 2010 I had been researching the paper cuts of Hans Christian Andersen, when they triggered a faint memory of the stark silhouettes in the book. It took me a while to recall the title, but after some searching I managed to track down the original 1973 edition. Weeks later, as I held it in my hands again, I couldn’t ignore the emotions I felt seeing the delicate drawings of Jan Pienkowski’s mermaids after all those years. It was such a powerful link to my mother that I decided I had to attempt something that would bring them to life for the series, no matter how impossible that felt at the time, or how long it would take.
Over the months my mind was filled with the idea of paper coming to life. This led to the concept of pop-up books, which in turn became entwined with my plans to create a fearsome queen who would rule over the new, darker side of the Wonderland story. The character evolved into a paper-cut Queen Elizabeth I commanding an armada of ships. It grew to the point that I could almost touch them in my dreams and couldn’t think of anything else. I knew the scene had to be pure white, static and stiff and the Queen’s costume needed to be sharp and unforgiving. It took a total of five months to design and make all the elements of the picture while I was still working at my job in the city. Whenever I felt I couldn’t carry on I remembered the curator’s words and kept going, even when well-meaning friends suggested I should rest and let the concept go.
The Costume
The queen’s costume was definitely the most difficult piece I have made for the project to date and there were so many times I found myself staring at piles of unpainted fans, losing the will to live. It was a slow process, but I felt compelled to make something beautiful and permanent as so many of the previous Wonderland costumes didn’t survive or had to be recycled into something else to save money. The queen’s skirt and collar were made from over 240 fine wooden fans sent from China. They were the perfect material to work with as they had all the characteristics I was looking for – sculptural, hard, sharp and yet also incredibly light with the same delicate appearance of lace. I deliberately left the bars of the crinoline cage exposed to suggest a prison and finished the front panels with a pair of Balinese shadow puppets, locking their hands together in a struggle, as if guarding the queen’s body inside.
I also made all the accessories by hand. The necklace and key props were my favourites and were created from an eclectic collection of antique items I sourced from vintage fairs across three different countries over six months, as well as an old bag of delicate rabbit bones from a Scottish taxidermist! I am especially proud of The White Queen’s key; it is extremely important to the story, and will reappear at various points in the hands of different characters. It represents the cycle of beauty and death, a continuous flow from the form of the fairy through the body of the skeleton, down to the bare bones that make up the teeth. I think it is possibly my favourite prop in the series, and one I will keep forever.
The Galleons
While working on the costume, I had to face the fact that I needed to design the galleon ship props myself after unsuccessfully approaching a few paper-cut artists hoping for a collaboration. I have never done anything like this before, and had no contacts and no idea what I was doing. It was without doubt the most difficult challenge I faced for the series and there were many, many times when I nearly gave up. In my ignorance I thought I could simply draw a galleon ship silhouette, take some of the book illustrations and work them into the shape. I presumed I could have the stencil cut in light balsa wood at any size I wanted, and that it would all be reasonably affordable … I had no idea how wrong I was!
To start with, the original Kingdom under the Sea illustrations were actually fine ink drawings and not neat silhouettes suitable for a stencil. After I had finished my galleon outline, I roughly tried to place some of mermaids within its shape and slowly realised the enormous problems I faced with positive and negative space. I soon learned how everything had to be supported, connected, and drawn in extremely accurate detail. Basically, it was everything that the original illustrations were not. It was incredibly complicated, I had to re-draw every single element by hand using a computer tablet and it took eighty agonizing hours to complete. The only thing that kept me going was that this prop, more than anything else in the entire project was a direct tangible link to my mother, and I simply couldn’t give up.
I could write forever about what happened next, how wrong I was about laser cutting and the costs involved. How I worked with a number of well-meaning supportive factories who sympathetically made me prototypes but constantly warned me my design was too complicated. Two months later, I was back to square one. The ships were too big and fragile for all the companies I contacted. I had hit a wall with no idea about where to turn next.
Finally, weeks later and through sheer desperation, my research led me to a specialist steel factory that had machinery big enough to take on my idea and a state-of-the-art nitrogen gas cutter – the only one in the UK – which was capable of the detail in my design. As excited as I was, by now everything was spiraling out of control. I was completely out of my depth with a specialised industrial factory and a price tag to match. The costume was almost made, and in my head there was no turning back. I kept thinking of the curator’s words ‘no compromise’ and for the first time since Wonderland began I was faced with a serious and expensive investment. It was a huge leap of faith for me. Up until now, everything had been home made and we got through the tricky bits with smoke and mirrors, but now I had no choice. This had gone from being a hobby to my future, so I held my breath and placed the order. On the day the ships were being cut, I arrived at the factory to be met with the sight of my design on the programmer’s monitor, covered in a constellation of a thousand reference points for the cutting machine to follow. The amount of work that had gone into the preparation was completely mind-blowing and extremely humbling. The factory owner said it was the most complicated design the machine had ever attempted and it had taken twenty-four hours to plot co-ordinates to get this far. I felt so guilty but after a few hours of the machine jamming and nervous glances, the first test piece began to take shape, and that was when everything took on a completely different level emotionally.
I know I will always remember the moment the machine operator stepped out of the booth with a smile and gently handed me the first metal offcut from the ship. I looked down and there in my palm was a tiny steel mermaid glinting in the light. In that moment, at the age of thirty-five, I had suddenly found myself holding a physical fragment of a childhood memory and it was indescribable. Nothing could have prepared me for the lurch in my stomach and the flood of emotion that came with it. It honestly took my breath away. Within minutes the first finished ship was lifted off the cutting bed and everything came to life. It was such a fantastic feeling; the design had finally worked! I photographed the whole process, approved the sample and quickly made my excuses to leave as soon as I could. I was a wreck. The relief I felt was so overwhelming that I sat and sobbed in the factory car park until I was able to pull away. The ships were something so deeply personal to me that no one could have understood. I had pushed myself so hard to make them a reality and in the process created something unique and personal, with meaning. It felt like the turning point I had been searching for, and something that I was truly proud of.
The final hurdle was the fact that in my dream the queen was also walking on water while connected to her ships. I suppose you have to laugh really, as this was making my life about as difficult as possible, but I pushed on regardless. After several weekends searching I found the perfect place: a little ornamental island on a fishing lake. It wasn’t too deep and was shallow enough to build an underwater platform for the model to stand on. It smelt horrendous and had a slightly menacing atmosphere, which in the end was perfect for the mood I wanted to create.
Shoot day
By now it was October 2011, the development of the ships and costume had taken so long, that the shoot had been pushed back from July to October. I had been terrified of it raining on the delicate costume, and for bad light and freezing temperatures for a model standing in water. So it was a huge relief and a bizarre coincidence that the UK had a two-day heat wave the very weekend of our shoot. On the day it was hard going – the entire set up took five hours to prepare. I stood at the water’s edge barking orders at poor Matt who was wading through the stinking slime, desperately trying to reposition the ships, constantly rushing from one to the other to stop them falling over. It was highly stressful and the late autumn sun was getting lower with every minute that passed.
However, when everyone was ready, and our model Ashleigh was in position, it was such a vision to behold. She was without a doubt the embodiment of the queen I had dreamt of for so many months. As the smoke crept across the set, the mood transformed and I found myself holding my breath behind the camera. It is usually at this point that witnessing the finished scene is a big moment for me and I stand back and take it all in, but despite those first thrilling seconds I was aware that time was not on our side. The light was fading and I was staring at months of work and a huge amount of money, so I just went on autopilot, taking as many pictures as I physically could, trying to cover all angles before it was too late.
The camera jammed halfway through, memory cards ran out, it was chaotic, but after an hour of unbelievable pressure it was over. Planks were then laid in the water and Ashleigh was carefully walked across to the edge of the bank. Dusk crept through the evening air, and before we knew it, the light was almost gone. I managed the final shots just before exhaustion completely took hold of me. My close up with our queen felt strangely real as she gripped the bone key, and stared back with dark hollow eyes. A chill ran down my spine, she was better than I had dared to imagine and with one last shot the day was over.
The Faraway Tree
The last picture in ‘The White Queen’ trilogy was ‘The Faraway Tree’. It was now 17 October 2011 and it would be my final shoot of the year. We were all burnt out, and I was becoming quite unwell by this point, but we simply had to make the final push. I had named the picture in homage to another of my favourite childhood storybooks of the same title by Enid Blyton. It was a concept I had wanted to create for a long time, and once I realised the potential of using the ships like shadow lanterns I felt we had to make this last attempt before the weather became impossible for us to carry on. Once again setting up the location was quite excruciating. The recent warm weather had turned and it was now cold, drizzling, and very windy. Basically they were the worst conditions we could have encountered apart from heavy rain. On the day of the shoot adrenaline was pumping through everyone as the boys scrambled up the tree with reels of wire in the fading afternoon light. I stood and directed the placement of the ships following a Photoshopped mock-up of the scene I had made in advance to help plan their positions. It was a lifesaver on the day. There wasn’t any time to spend hours moving the ships into different positions as they were far too heavy and we made extremely slow progress. I had created the layout by visiting the location the day before, and photographing the tree with Matt holding one ship beside it for true scale reference. I then cloned the image and produce the rough placement for the ships. This was vital to getting everything ready as accurately and quickly as possible.
As far as lighting went, it was the first time I have ever shot a scene at night. All the lighting was powered from one very small petrol generator, and I permanently had my heart in my mouth worrying it would give up and choke out on us. We used standard energy saving bulbs so that they used less power, and all of it ran off a very long homemade cable that Matt had wired up. As the daylight finally disappeared, and the wind picked up, I remember standing in the dark thinking it was never going to work. The whole thing smacked of disaster, with wires everywhere and expensive steel ships flapping furiously in the wind. I kept whispering to myself, ‘It will be ok,’ over and over again. I nervously looked through the viewfinder waiting to feel something but the scene remained flat and uninspiring as the blank ships hung lifeless from the tree. Just as I was losing hope, the roar of the generator broke the silence and the bulbs suddenly sparked into life and there before us was the most magical vision. Everyone shouted and whooped – it was amazing. Elbie was jumping up and down, and so was I, and I could see the relief on poor Matt’s face when the power kicked in. It had to be one of the most beautiful things I’ve witnessed in the series so far. I had tears in my eyes from the rush of emotion, it was truly, truly magical. My heart soared as the galleons lit up, and there before us were the perfect silhouettes of my childhood book illustrations brought to life. The sense of achievement after the previous few months’ stress was simply immense.
I will never forget that night. Once the picture was over and it was time to go, I remember walking around collecting crates and wires, tripping over things in the dark, still thinking about what had happened. We dragged everything back to the car, and the look on everyone’s face was a picture. It had been relentless for hours, the pace of setting up, and then rushing to get the picture; to finally stop felt quite strange. Everyone was broken but so triumphant, we ended up throwing ourselves into a shaky group hug in the glare of the car headlights laughing and groaning, patting our backs … We had done it! It was the final picture, and now the weather could do its worst, everything that needed to be done had been achieved.
While the others loaded the cars, I pretended I had forgotten something back at the tree and walked off into the night just to take a moment. I knew I had overdone things again, my stomach was lurching with cramps and my skin was tingling. I couldn’t remember the last time I had sat quietly in months, but that night, it was worth all the bad stuff that came afterwards. I had made two pictures that were not only for my mother, but they were direct, strong and unbreakable links to her and my memories of us together. I felt like I had taken a few more steps away from my grief, and closed another door on the ghosts of hospital. I knew this was my best, and all I could possibly give.
Inspiring and beautiful work Kirsty. Your art work helped me to motivate students in their creative writing and they served as a reminder that genius is 99% perspiration!.
Thank you for allowing us to see your creations.
Lizzy